Emily Blunt and Rob Marshall on Mary Poppins Returns
Rencontre avec le réalisateur et la star du nouveau Mary Poppins.
Le Retour de Mary Poppins, en salles à partir du 19 décembre, marque le retour de l’emblématique nanny Britannique sur grand écran. Réalisé par Rob Marshall et conçu comme une suite au film de 1964, cet opus mêlant comédie, fantastique, chorégraphies aériennes et esthétique colorée est une petite merveille cinématographique. Rencontre avec Rob Marshall et Emily Blunt, la nouvelle Mary Poppins.
NEW YORK — The star and director of Mary Poppins Returns sit close together on a settee in a hotel suite high above Central Park, thick as thieves, and suddenly they’re not Emily Blunt, Golden Globe-winning actress, and Rob Marshall, Hollywood’s Oscarnominated go-to musical man. It’s the “Em and Robbie” show. 2. There’s an exceedingly warm mutual admiration and a shorthand between the pair after two films together, a rapport that first sparked years ago over lunch for a project that didn’t pan out and blossomed when Blunt starred as the plucky baker’s wife in Marshall’s 2014 hit adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Marshall calls Blunt an old soul and “my favorite actress.” The two are creatively simpatico, they say, which is a big part of how they found the confidence to attempt something as wildly ambitious as reviving one of the most beloved characters in cinematic history. Still, Blunt admits, she was surprised and terrified when Marshall called her one day after the success of Into the Woods to propose teaming on a project he wanted to make with Disney.
SEQUEL TO THE 1964 MOVIE
3. Mary Poppins Returns, a Disney song-anddance extravaganza in the vein of the studio’s song-and-dance classics of yore, is a direct sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins. The fantasy classic was based on P.L. Travers’ book series about a magical nanny who floats out of the clouds to bring order and joy to the young Banks children in 1910 London.
4. Directed by Robert Stevenson and featuring more than a dozen iconic earworms by the Sherman brothers, Mary Poppins was one of the year’s highest-grossing films and scored 13 Oscar nominations and won five (including lead actress, original song and original score). Breathing life into its titular heroine, Julie Andrews served up a practically perfect screen performance that defined the character to generations of fans. Arriving in theaters Dec. 19, Mary Poppins Returns is aiming for a repeat.
MAKING MUSICALS
5. “Musicals are complicated to create because you have to find the rhythm. You have to know when there’s a ballad, when there’s an uptempo, what you need when,” said Marshall, who made his feature directing debut with the 2002 Oscarwinning musical Chicago, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award. “Bad musicals are when you haven’t earned a song. But in a good musical, you’re unaware that they’re singing.” Mary Poppins Returns was the most massive undertaking of his career, Marshall estimated, and that’s coming from a filmmaker who also directed a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.
6. Making the world of Mary Poppins both familiar and fresh to 2018 audiences began with connecting its threads to the original. A screenplay by David Magee sets Poppins’ return to Cherry Tree Lane two decades after her last visit. England is suffering under the gloom of the Great Depression, and a now-grown Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) is a recent widower. Even with the help of his activist-unionizer sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer), he struggles to raise his three young children and keep bank lenders (including a villainous Colin Firth) from seizing the family home.
A NEW POPPINS
7. Bringing life and light once again in a time of darkness, Mary Poppins alights on a kite from the sky. And in Blunt’s rendition, she isn’t quite the same Poppins you might remember. Revisiting Travers’ expansive series of books proved crucial for Blunt, since as soon as she signed on to play the legendary role she vowed not to watch the original film again. “I didn’t want any natural instinct I might have to be diluted by the brilliance of what [Andrews] did,” she said. The Mary Poppins of the books, she found, presented new and different qualities than those seen in the 1964 film. “There’s an eccentricity and a battiness to her. She’s incredibly vain and rude and funny,” Blunt said with a grin, “I read the books quite fully, and it became clear to me where I wanted to go with her.”
8. But it wasn’t just Mary Poppins’ uniquely oblique persona that the actress had to find; carrying a bombastic Hollywood throwback musical, she embraced her inner Broadway hoofer … and vocalist. “I still love singing in the shower or the car, love it — karaoke, if I’m drunk enough — but I have always, ever since I was a child, found it very nerve-wracking to sing in front of people,” said Blunt. “But I think I am one of those people who, when I am nervous about something, I almost have to go all the way, because it combats the fear.”
“A JOYBOMB ON THE SOUL”
9. “What I love about Mary Poppins the most is she recognizes what people need and she gives it to them,” said Blunt, “but she gives it to them in a way that they can go on a voyage of selfdiscovery. She wants zero credit.” Recognizing that such a film might be what audiences need now — particularly the younger viewers — was something Marshall believes got so many talented cast members on board, including Blunt’s Devil Wears Prada and Into the Woods co-star Meryl Streep. “Meryl said yes within seconds,” he said. “She called the film ‘a gift to the world.’ I think … we were all aware of that.”
10. “Among the acrimony and bitterness that is out there right now in the air, I think a film like this could actually be the great unifier, at Christmas, which would be nice, wouldn’t it?” added Blunt. “As my husband puts it, it’s a joybomb on the soul.”