Nanny State
As the supernanny descends from the sky to help the Banks children again, is Mary Poppins Returns the spoonful of sugar that the world needs right now? TF speaks to Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda and director Rob Marshall about the festive throwback set
Pinewood Park, Pinewood Studios. Emily Blunt is suspended 50-odd feet in the air, umbrella in hand, about to descend onto the studio’s iconic green, as the even more iconic nanny. This moment in filming encapsulates Mary Poppins Returns in a nutshell: cinema history is all around and the preparations have been made with care, but there’s also the fear of a fall from a very great height. “I thought I was someone who was quite good at heights,” recalls Blunt when TF catches up with her months later. “And then, when I was 50ft in the air, I realised I was not good with heights – at all!”
“She was scared,” remembers Rob Marshall, the director tasked with, erm, marshalling a new incarnation of Poppins to the screen some 54 years after the last one, the longest live-action gap in sequel history (only Bambi and Fantasia had bigger hiatuses). “Her first entrance, that’s not against greenscreen. That is her up there.” Risking it all in service of making a practically perfect follow-up is the name of the game with Returns. Even on the day of the shoot, the arrival sequence was summoning unexpected feels. “I think you know when you’ve made something that has impacted people, because all the crew were really moved by it,” says Blunt with a laugh. “I remember one of the camera guys came up. He was like, [adopts gruff voice] ‘I got quite emotional watching you arrive like that.’ It’s cool when you realise that it’s made an impact.”
It’s hard to underestimate the impact of Mary Poppins.
For generations who have grown up under her stern tutelage, she’s an indelible, psyche-seared childhood memory. From the immediately recognisable silhouette to the earworm-inducing Sherman Brothers songs, to the fantasy London backdrop, Mary Poppins has endured as a favourite for five decades (even if Poppins author P.L. Travers wasn’t exactly a fan, as detailed in the film Saving Mr. Banks). It’s an untouchably tough act to follow, but maybe what the world really needs right now in
these cynical, politically divided times is for a magical nanny to return and revive our sense of childlike wonder.
Marshall certainly felt trepidatious when he was first approached. “When Disney asks you to do something like this, it’s immediately daunting,” he says. “Like, ‘What? How could we possibly…?’” But then a series of things happened that allowed Marshall to find a way in. “I thought, ‘I love the original so much that I know I will do everything I can to treat this film with great respect and honour and care.’ Because I thought, ‘Can you imagine this in someone’s hands who doesn’t feel the same way that I do about the film?’”
Marshall was also initially unaware that there were eight books in the series, written between 1934 and 1988, which would provide fresh material to draw on. The first books being written in the ’30s also inspired a fresh angle for the sequel. “[Walt] Disney chose to set [the original] in a more innocent time, which was beautiful, in 1910. But I thought, ‘Well, we could try to work from the original books.’ And then I was very aware of the fact that people know Mary Poppins mostly from the film. So I said, ‘Well, if that was 1910, this is 1934.’ So it’s 24 years later. What if Michael and Jane were grown up?”
Laughing all the way to the Banks
And that’s the premise for Returns: Jane and Michael Banks are now adults themselves, played by Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, and Michael has three children of his own. He’s struggling to keep it together, emotionally and financially: having suffered a bereavement, he’s also fighting against the repossession of the family home on Cherry Tree Lane. The Banks kids, it turns out, need a little intervention from Mary Poppins again. Which is where Blunt flies in. According to Marshall – who previously worked with Blunt on Into The Woods – no one else was considered for the part. “There’s a fine line,” says Marshall of the role. “You have to play the duality of a very strict and strong nanny, who denies having anything to do with anything. At the same time, there has to be a great deal of warmth and care. Plus she has to sing and dance. And she’s funny. So to find that combination? There was literally no one else. If she didn’t do it, I can’t imagine doing the film.”
Original Mary Julie Andrews decided against a cameo, telling Marshall, “This is Emily’s show, I’m not going to step on that.” Marshall calls Blunt’s Poppins a “rediscovered version” of the same character, pointing to the differences between Sean Connery and Daniel Craig’s James Bonds. “It really is her own, and you’ll see that.” As Blunt tells TF, her version of the character is in no way a Julie Andrews impersonation. “I do remember feeling very deep things for it [as a child], but when I embarked on actually playing her myself, I decided not to rewatch it,” she says. “I was just left with a lasting memory of what it made me feel like as a child, but I had no memory of the details of how Julie played her, and all that stuff.”
Instead, Blunt returned to the books. “She just leapt off the page at me, and she had so many qualities that I really knew I was going to try to bring to my version of her,” she explains. “She is really eccentric in the books, and kind of batty. She’s really out there, you know, and rude and vain and all of these delicious qualities that I was going to be able to play.” The books were the launching pad, before other inspirations for this Poppins started to filter in. “I started thinking about the time period and the ’30s and a film like His Girl Friday was a really inspiring one to watch. Rosalind Russell, she’s so extraordinary in the film, and she comes in like a hurricane. She’s so fast-paced. And I knew that sort of pace was
something I really wanted to do. And I was quite taken by how Princess Margaret used to speak. It’s sort of a weird amalgamation of the books and various other influences that created this version of her.”
Under Marshall’s watchful fanboy’s eye, this Mary arrives in a new time period, but with all the trimmings you’d expect: impishly cute kids, eccentric supporting characters, Sherman Brothers-style musical numbers, traditionally animated sequences… there’s even an equivalent of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep/Jack-of-all-trades, Bert. Hamilton creator and general all-round musical phenomenon Lin-Manuel Miranda plays lamplighter Jack, a former apprentice of Bert’s. “I think Jack is in awe of Mary Poppins,” explains Miranda, whose natural charm could light streetlights. “He’s the same age as the Banks children. He grew up aware, and he’s sort of the one who hasn’t forgotten that she is magical.”
After writing, composing and starring in Hamilton, Miranda describes Returns as a “vacation”, though he’s clearly in awe of the material. He didn’t feel any hesitation, specifically because this was a sequel, rather than a remake. “If they were saying, ‘We’re remaking Mary Poppins,’ then I would say, ‘Good luck to you. It will never work. Goodbye.’ That first movie is perfect. But the fact that there were additional Mary Poppins stories that were unexplored on film; the fact that Rob Marshall was at the head of it, was the biggest decision-maker, because I think he’s one of the best makers of musicals alive – full stop. I think that his Chicago movie is one of the best adaptations of a stage musical ever ever ever. And when I asked him, ‘Who’s Mary Poppins?’ and he said, ‘Emily Blunt’ – I was like, ‘OK, I’m in.’”
Miranda’s on-stage experience provided the basis for his all-singing, all-dancing film role, even if it is “very, very different – it’s the same muscles, but you’re using them in different ways”. If he’s aware of the pitfalls of revisiting a beloved property, he’s also wide-eyed at the prospect. “The advantage is, it’s something that people already love. The challenge is, it’s something that people already love,” he laughs. “So you know, the reason we’re making it is that we love it, too, and there are unexplored stories that we can tell.”
Unlike his forebear, Miranda opted against going “full Cockney”, but Van Dyke himself does return to sort of reprise a role from the original – not Bert, but after playing the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank’s Mr. Dawes Sr. in 1964, here he plays Dawes Jr. (albeit with a little less age make-up required). “It was terribly moving when he was on set,” says Blunt. “I think people were surprised how much they couldn’t stop crying, watching him. Because he’s such a… I mean, as my brother said at the time, ‘That guy is such a G.’” She breaks out in a fit of laughter. “But he’s so cool. He came in, and literally, at 92 years old, tap-danced on top of the desk. He came alive when the music started playing. He’s such a natural performer. Those incredibly iconic blue eyes and that smile and everything
– you have it seared into your memory as a kid when you used to watch Dick Van Dyke. It was just awesome.”
It’s those warm, permanently preserved memories that Mary Poppins Returns trades in. After all, at times like this, don’t we all need a little more childlike wonder in our lives? “We were filming this movie in the middle of the aftermath of this election, in the fallout of the Brexit referendum,” says Miranda. “So just unsure times, and unrest in the headlines. And then we go to work to make something that’s just meant to make people feel unalloyed, childlike joy for two-and-some-odd hours. And that was a lovely reason to go to work every day. If you look at the Great Depression in the United States, that was also the rise of the MGM musicals. We live in a very real world, and we need very real escapes. I think that Mary Poppins Returns is very much that.”
Marshall concurs. This is a film that’s needed in these tumultuous times. “It’s why, for three years, having worked on this, I love disappearing into this world,” he says. “I’ve loved being a part of this, telling this story of a rediscovery, of a joy that’s missing. All the books are about how you take an ordinary life, an ordinary task like walking through the park and going through an errand – how do you turn that into an adventure? What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful way to live.”
MARY POPPINS RETURNS OPENS ON 21 DECEMBER.
‘ Mary’s a weird mix of influences... such as Princess Margaret’ Emily Blunt