Young actors take on weighty roles with gravitas in Texas Legacy in Lights

The word august — which, like the month, is named for Roman emperor Caesar Augustus — means “worthy of respect,” “inspiring reverence” and “of supreme dignity.”

While William Grant Bain and Zachary Colmenero may have been two of the youngest male actors on the set of Texas Legacy in Lights, the historical figures they portray in the film could easily be described as august — John E. Gaston and William Philip King.

In the film’s retelling of events, these two young Texians — who were just 17 and 15 in 1836 — each made the ultimate sacrifice for what may be the noblest cause of all: love.

Texas Legacy in Lights shows a budding relationship between Gaston and Evaline DeWitt, daughter of colony founders Green and Sarah DeWitt, before he marches off as one of the Immortal 32 from Gonzales which came to the aid of the Alamo defenders.

“To me, it tells me what this man was willing to leave behind in defense of his family and his people,” Bain said. “I can’t imagine finding the girl that I love and getting engaged and then turning around and being ‘Okay, I'm gonna go fight, and I may not come back. I may be sacrificing all this, including my future family.’

“There's so much life ahead of 17 years old and he was willing to give all that up to to make Texas a better place.”

Meanwhile, King stepped up and took his father’s place among the reinforcements, persuading John King the family needed the patriarch much more at home than Col. William Travis did in the Alamo. He would man a cannon in the mission and would become the youngest defender killed in battle. King County in North Texas near the Panhandle bears his name.

“My character is 15 and I'm 15 as well,” said Colmenero. “That makes things like even more real. It's just like, ‘Wow, this kid really went out there and did this. He stood behind a cannon and operated that.’

“We have life so easy now and William — he did this for his family. He stepped in for his father. Taking that on is crazy!”

Bain actually is a direct descendant of John William Smith, the very man who delivered the call for reinforcements from the Alamo to the people of Gonzales and who returned to the Alamo with Gaston, King and 30 other Gonzaleans. Smith would be dispatched with a message to Washington-on-the-Brazos and miss the fall of the Alamo, but he would fight at San Jacinto and serve as mayor of San Antonio one year later.

“I remember, in third and fourth grade, I was hyperfixated on the history of the Alamo, and I thought it was so cool,” Bain said. “I had a cardboard box and I'd play with little toy soldiers and I even wore a coonskin hat to school in elementary school. I remember watching the movies with my grandpa and he'd be crying. It's just crazy to think now I'm one of those guys that I saw on the screen.”

Colmenero said he was drawn to the idea of telling the story of someone his age playing such an important role at a critical junction in Texas history.

“The Alamo was such an important part of Texas,” Colmenero said. “The Alamo is Texas. I’ve gone to the Alamo a few times over the years and seen the memorial they have for the Immortal 32 there. I did a lot of preparation for his role with books and doing a lot of research. In my neighborhood where I live, we have a bunch of older people who were very generous when they heard about this project and gave me plenty of materials to study up on and that was really cool.”

Bain said he also had taken trips to the Alamo before filming “just to kind of feel the energy of where my character eventually dies.”

“I went to the gun range to get used to shooting guns,” Bain said. “We got to ride horses, which is great and that's why we're all sunburned. I slept outside in the tent, because back in the day they didn't have AC. They slept in tents or out outside, so I did that.”

Colmenero said when he and Bain were not in scene on set, they were training with a coach how their characters would have acted as volunteer soldiers, including riding horses, shooting guns and getting accustomed to being in costume and dealing with the Texas summer heat — even though the events of the Battle of Gonzales happened in early October 1835, while the Immortal 32 left Gonzales in late February 1836 and arrived at the Alamo on March 1, 1836 before dying in the final battle at the mission on March 6.

“I like (the summer heat) because it makes me feel more and more connected to the character and if I start experiencing all the things that they experienced, then I don't have to try as hard to put myself in my character's shoes,” Colmenero said. “I'm in his shoes, and I'm sweating, and it's very real.”

Colmenero has been acting for the past five years, since the COVID-19 outbrek, and said he feels “every production is different in their own ways.”
“I've done sitcoms where it's been inside of a soundstage, or commercials where it's inside of a house,” Colmenero said. “This has been really special because we're out here in a village and we're out in the fields. I love historical pieces and this one has been— they've done such a good job with making this as accurate to the actual Alamo as possible. It's been so cool to see all the historians and really get to talk to them and get to see all the building sets.”

Bain, who recently moved to Atlanta to try his hand at acting, said it was especially special that his first major role had him coming back to his native Texas to act.

“I just started acting more professionally probably a little bit less than a year ago,” Bain said. “I've done a lot of films at UT with the UT film students and some other independent short films, but most of it is very student level. It kind of blows my mind when they told me that they paid for my hotel. I feel like my dreams are starting to come true.

I personally just moved to Atlanta, because that's sometimes what you got to do — you’ve got to move out of Texas for all the opportunity, but it's nice that my first bigger job, I had to come back to Texas,” Bain added.