Granger Smith Makes Acting Debut in MOONRISE, Writes Original Song ‘Forever Forward’
By Movieguide® Staff
Country artist Granger Smith recently made his acting debut in the new movie, MOONRISE.
“After country singer Will Brown’s wife passes away, his grief sidelines his career and pushes him away from his young daughter until a bright and talented horse trainer shows him strength, forgiveness and grace to live life again,” the IMDb synopsis reads.
Smith recently talked with Movieguide®’s Evy Baehr Carroll about his first-ever movie role, and the new, original song he wrote for the movie, ‘Forever Forward.’
“I’ve never done a project like this at all,” he said. “I had no idea what to expect. I really liked the story. I’ve never acted, but I would like to give it a try to represent this character.”
“When I took the role, I read the script and at the end my character sings the song, it’s called ‘Forever Forward,’” he added. “That’s a big deal to me. I remember thinking, ‘What is that song? And will I even like performing it… I texted the director, and I said, ‘Can you send me that song, so I could start learning it?’ And she said, ‘Oh, that’s a song that doesn’t exist, that’s just a placeholder of a song that we’ll try to find and then we’ll plug it in later.’ And I was like, that’s really hard to do. So I said, ‘Why don’t you just let me take a stab at writing it.’”
While Smith is new to acting, writing the song was right up his alley and made it into the final production of MOONRISE.
Smith said that he related to the themes of the movie, which deals with grief, due to the death of his 3-year-old son in June 2019.
Movieguide® reported:
“I was there,” Smith recalled. “I was 15 feet away from this. I was doing gymnastics with my daughter, and River was playing water gunfight with our son, Lincoln. And somehow he got into our gated locked pool. Within seconds, right behind me while I was doing gymnastics with our daughter, he was in the pool and had inhaled water. Became unconscious. When I pulled him out, I didn’t know CPR, besides what I had seen in the movies, and we lived out in the country.”
He continued “So, it took paramedics 10 minutes to get there. That’s too long to go without oxygen to his little brain, and it ended up being irreversible.”
River died the next day.
“The months and years following that were rock bottom for me,” Smith said. He shared that he and wife Amber Bartlett struggled to come to terms with their son’s death.
“I thought I could [do it] on my own with self-help and self-improvement and exercise and positivity and visualization, meditation and devotionals,” he explained. “I thought I could just mend it, fix it and move on, and I couldn’t.”
The singer said that it wasn’t until he “surrendered to God” that he found any peace.
“God gave River to us for three years and that was his mission,” Smith explained. “I don’t think God takes anyone too soon. I believe he was put on this earth for the exact amount of time… He lived a good 1,000 days. That’s a huge example for me and how we’re going to look at every single day.”
Smith hopes that MOONRISE will encourage people to not face their grief alone, but to trust that God is sovereign to heal and bring joy back into life again.
“If you’re dealing with an empty chair at the table, because a lot of people are and if they’re not, they will be… there is a way forward through that, joy does exist after that,” he said. “Christmas is a magical time in the future, even though it’s not this year, maybe not next year, but there is a time when you actually love the holiday again. I hope that that’s what this movie could help people remember.”
“When I first read the script, I don’t know if I walked away at all, and said, ‘This is a really faith-based film.’ It’s a wholesome film, for sure. But then, as we started working on it, and then, as I started looking at the mockups of it as we started putting it together, it’s like, wow, God is sovereign,” he continued. “He’s running through the threads of this entire script, even though the people aren’t screaming for Jesus to save them. There is this underlying theme that there’s a creator, and there’s a source. And there is a purpose, and there’s a plan. And it’s beyond the capability of manipulation by the people in the film itself. It’s all about surrender for us.”
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