‘It was very real’ - ‘Romeo n Juliet 4EVA’ stars recall experience of filming

Even though he had hectic scenes, including 'scaling fences' to get to his on-screen love and having to practise Shakespeare-toned lines, one of the stars of Romeo n Juliet 4EVA, Deshawn Miller, says he would do it all again.

The emotions, including the willingness to sacrifice his life for a girl he hardly knew, is also something Miller says he would do in real life.

"The movie made me feel like we really had something going on. It felt [like] real [love]. It was very real and I would like Jamaicans to come out, spend yuh money, buy yuh good clothes fi come watch it, because this is something you have to watch," Miller told THE STAR. In the movie, Miller, who is a chef by profession, played Romeo, a star student and pan food vendor. At the time of filming seven years ago, that was his real life. He loved cooking and was pursuing culinary studies in school. He lived where the shop and home scenes were shot for the movie, and the cookshop was owned by his parents, with whom he worked on weekends. So acting the role of a young boy with a sick mother and having to operate a cookshop at night at the front of his yard was a no-brainer for him.

"Once I left high school, I went straight to HEART/NSTA Trust, and after that I went to the Jamaica Pegasus, where I cook; and I [also] now have my own catering business, Rafeal Artistic Pastries," Miller told THE STAR.

Miller took time off from work for the private viewing of the film at the Palace Cineplex on October 1, a move he does not regret.

"I was looking up [at the movie poster] and I was like, 'A me that? Lover boy! Lover boy at his best,' and I am grateful for the experience. I've been sitting and waiting and waiting, and I'm like, 'This nah go possible. Let's just stick to the chef career.' But bwoy, when mi get this, mi can't go walk a road again," Miller said, before bursting into laughter.

Like Miller, Shanice Gowans, who plays Juliet, the experience all started as a simple school project at Haile Selassie High School, where they were attending at the time.

"I feel really good about it. I had my doubts of it coming to fruition. Now, seeing it on screen coming together with me, a 14- then 15-year-old teenager at the time, I really loved it. I loved the way it came together, even though at the time I did cringe and had some insecurities about it. I love it in the end," Gowans, who now works as a billing agent at a call centre, told THE STAR.

"For me, playing Juliet, wow! It was at the time a roller coaster, because I had to be giving off this energy and these emotions that I'm not used to, [such as] falling in love and making it my world," she said.

How they were cast is its own fairy-tale-esque story. The producer, Paul Bucknor, hosted a local Shakespeare Schools' Championship, and though Knox College won that year, availability led to the students of Haile Selassie, who placed third, taking the spotlight. Miller and Gowans were students of Michael Forrest, a teacher at the school and the man behind their training and that of others. Miller and Gowans also opined that the movie will put their alma mater on the international map.

Now that she has been featured in a film that has been played in the United Kingdom, Gowans sees this as an opportunity to expand her career in acting.

"Five years from now, I see myself using my theatre arts experience. So if this movie should promote me in a positive light, I believe that I could be acting professionally. I'm not putting any boundaries on it. I can be acting," she said.

The movie already had a sold-out special during a Jamaica Independence Day screening at Brixton's Ritzy Cinema on August 6.