'Newsies' star says he and Christian Bale used to sing their respective countries' national anthems on set

• "Newsies" star David Moscow said he and Christian Bale would sometimes sing at each other on set.
• He said he'd sing the US national anthem and Bale would sing "God Save the Queen."

"Newsies" star David Moscow told Insider he and costar Christian Bale had some good times on the set of the 1992 movie musical, saying they'd get into sing-offs.

The actor, who's from New York, said he shared a "double banger," a trailer with an accordion divider in the middle, with English actor Bale. Because of the thin wall between their spaces, "you could literally hear everything that was going on" on the other side, Moscow explained to Insider ahead of the movie's 30th anniversary.

"Out of nowhere, I would start singing the national anthem and he would start singing, 'God Save the Queen' and we would try and out-sing each other as loud as we could," he told Insider. "It would happen at any moment."

"He's a good dude. He's very, very solid fun," Moscow said about Bale. "We all had a really wonderful time."

Moscow said he ran with the "younger kids" and Bale mostly ran with the "older crew" despite Bale only being a few months older.

"He definitely felt like an older guy and I was still a kid," Moscow said. "Our little groups would run around the set — all of New York Street in Universal was pretty much ours. If you weren't shooting at that moment, you would just wander off and explore."

He said the crew would also have fights with Super Soakers — a type of water gun popular in the 1990s — across the studio lot. He said it "was a great day" if you hit director Kenny Ortega, the movie's choreographers, or Disney execs.

Moscow and Bale didn't know 'Newsies' was going to be a musical at first

Ortega was determined to cast actors for the two lead roles in the film instead of performers, which meant Moscow and Bale didn't have a musical background or training prior to "Newsies."

Bale signed onto the Disney movie before it became a musical and, in a 1997 interview with Movieline, he said he even tried to get out of doing the musical numbers.

Moscow told Insider he was "terrified" about having to sing and dance for the movie, and the crew "had to calm both me and Christian down and be like, 'Look, we're never gonna make you look bad.'"

Moscow explained that he would be quickly moved out of frame or shown predominantly through close-ups of his face during the dance numbers so the audience couldn't see his moves.

He also revealed that he and Bale worked with Madonna's vocal coach and sometimes practiced six days a week.

Overall, Moscow said, he had a "magical" experience filming "Newsies" despite its box-office failure.

Representatives for Bale did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read Insider's 30th-anniversary retrospective on "Newsies" here.