Why Emily took to the skies as she filmed her role in Poppins
EMILY Mortimer plays the grown-up Jane Banks in Mary Poppins Returns, with Ben Whishaw in the role of brother Michael.
Emily Blunt’s magical nanny has come back to save the pair as much as she has Michael’s three children.
During filming, Mortimer commuted between her home in Brooklyn — which she shares with her actor husband Alessandro Nivola, son Samuel, 15, and daughter May, eight — and the Poppins set.
She said she hadn’t wanted to take the children out of school and relocate them to London during the shoot.
Emily has a fondness for the 1964 original that starred Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins and Glynis Johns as Mrs Banks (mother of Jane and Michael). She loves a line Mrs Banks sings: ‘Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid,’ she recited, eyeing me and Whishaw as she did so.
I’ve seen Mary Poppins Returns twice, and been charmed by it.
Later, when I see Emily, her husband and daughter at the Poppins party at the V&A, she ushers us all into a makeshift kitchen. I’m probably not supposed to know, but I wanted to ask her if it’s true that she’s adapting Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit Of Love and Love In A Cold Climate for the BBC (each a three-part miniseries). She reluctantly admits that she is.
She and Nivola make a formidable duo. They run King Bee Productions from their brownstone townhouse. Initially, they set it up to produce the Doll & Em comedy series (which Mortimer starred in).
Now they’re making films such as To Dust, starring Matthew Broderick, and developing different TV series for eOne Studios with Rachel Weisz, Steve Coogan and Woody Harrelson.
‘We like to keep busy,’ Emily said, adding that her husband’s the star, pointing out that he just won a BIFA award for his performance in Weisz’s film Disobedience.
Nivola has landed the lead in a $50 million Warner movie in which he plays Tony Soprano’s mentor Dickie Moltisanti. ‘Tony’s nine years old in the film,’ the actor explained.
Penned by Sopranos writer David Chase, it’s set in the Sixties, against the backdrop of the race riots in New Jersey.
As he’s speaking, a security guard pops his head in and asks us to take the East Wind back to the party.