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Five years after the success of Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran have once again combined forces with Working Title Films to bring forth the next chapter in the magical and enchanting fable that has delighted children through the generations.
"We always described the premise of the first Nanny McPhee film as 'the magical nanny versus the seven most horrible children in the history of the world,'" explains Lindsay Doran, "and I think that's what these films will always be about - badly behaved children, and the magical nanny who comes to help them. The chief difference between the first film and the new one is that the first film was about a war between a parent and his children, while the new film is about a war between children and children. Nanny McPhee must teach these children five new lessons, and instruct them not only about how to get along, but about how to solve their problems in a more constructive way than fighting."
Writer/Executive Producer and Actress Emma Thompson adds: "In both films, there's a prevailing sense of absence. In the first film, the absence is caused by the death of Mrs Brown who's had too many children which was very true for that era. In the second film, it is the father's absence in awar which was true of that era and, unfortunately, of the era we live in now."
Thompson began creating the story for the new film while the original film was still in production, and wrote the script over the next three years. Throughout the process, Thompson tried to keep to the spirit of the original material. The Nanny McPhee character began as Nurse Matilda, the central figure of bedtime stories in the family of Christianna Brand and her cousin, Edward Ardizzone (who illustrated the Nurse Matilda books). The stories were passed down over a hundred years, with each generation adding to the legend of the family's ill-behaved children and the supernatural nanny who arrives to tame them. Christianna Brand first wrote them down in the 1960's, and by that time they had achieved a timeless quality that Thompson has endeavored to preserve in her scripts. The story and characters may be new, but the basic attributes of a Nurse Matilda/Nanny McPhee story - her lessons, her looks that change from hideous to beautiful as the children come to love her, her magic stick, her heartbreaking need to go as soon as she's wanted instead of needed - remain the same.
Director Susanna White was hired to bring Emma's script to life on the screen. Producer Eric Fellner says, "Susanna's TV films and dramas are stunning and that's what drew us to her. She brought a unique sensibility to the project and was passionate about doing it. I think the finished film speaks volumes for her skills and expertise."
White recalls the moment that she received the script: "I was in Africa where I'd been directing huge explosions all day for the American invasion of Iraq in Generation Kill. I came back in the evening, read the script and immediately felt a connection with it. I'd loved the first film but I think the thing that really appealed to me in the new script was that it is the story of a working mother who isn't coping, who is desperately trying to hold her life together. I'd loved what Emma and Kirk Jones had created in the first film which was this creature of myth - that Nanny McPhee is a magical nanny - she's scary but she's safely scary, and I felt that they created something iconic." White also felt inspired by classic family films such as The Railway Children and The Sound of Music "that combined emotion and comedy. I thought I could bring real emotional truth to it," she adds.
White felt that her television and documentary background helped to inform the way that she worked on the script. She explains: "I think the big thing that a documentary background gave me was an ability to understand people in a huge variety of emotional situations, and I always use that as my touchstone. I've been there when people have been dying, when babies are born, at post mortems, at all kinds of celebrations and I think I really know when something in front of the camera feels 'real' and I wanted to create that in a fictional drama."
PICK YOURSELF UP, DUST YOURSELF OFF, START ALL OVER AGAIN
The decision to make a second Nanny McPhee film necessitated the creation of an entirely new story. Doran explains: "People who haven't read the three Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand might assume that we based the first film on the first book and the second film on the second book. But Emma mined every bit of story and character from all three of those books to create the script for the first film so there really wasn't anything left. She had to start from scratch." But what should the new story be? A decision was made early on not to show Nanny McPhee returning to the Brown family from the first film to solve a new set of problems. Says Doran, "A director friend once said to me, 'We should only make films about the most important day in a character's life. Who cares about the second most important day in a character's life?' He was referring to sequels in which all the characters are the same, and the problems they're facing just aren't as big or as organic as they were in the original. It seemed like good advice."
The solution was to have Nanny McPhee travel through time and space to visit a new family. Fellner comments, "She's a bit like Batman in that she has her magic powers and can operate in whatever way she deems necessary for the situation. Says Thompson, "Nanny McPhee is ageless and timeless. Who knows how long she's been visiting families or how many families she's visited? Once we made the decision to move her through time, I knew immediately where I wanted to put her - wartime. I wanted her to visit a family in which the father was away at war, and the mother was home trying to hold everything together. New problems for the children, new problems for the parent, and five new lessons for Nanny McPhee to teach." A decision was also made to make the war non-specific. The period resembles the 1940s and World War II in many ways, but it is a resemblance rather than a strict adherence. Doran explains, "We wanted the war in this film to be a metaphor for all wars. And we didn't want the look of the film restricted by a slavish adherence to what was real in a certain year. So we set it in what we called the 'sort-of 40s,' a period which has much in common with the World War II era but has a unique look all its own."
The decision to bring Nanny McPhee into another century allowed for some additional benefits. In the new film, we meet more than one adult who was Nanny McPhee's charge at an earlier age. The first is Sergeant Jeffreys, the unusually large soldier whom Norman and Cyril encounter outside the War Office. Says Nonso Anozie who plays the soldier: "Sergeant Jeffreys is a towering guard at the War Office and at first you think he's a very scary character. But when Nanny McPhee appears on the scene, you realise he was once just as vulnerable as the little children in the story. And indeed, in Nanny McPhee's presence, he is still just as vulnerable." When Nanny McPhee first sees Sergeant Jeffreys standing to attention, she remarks, "Lesson Three paid off, I see." Thompson confides, "Many people have speculated as to what Lesson Three was for Sergeant Jeffreys. The answer is simple: Stand up straight." Nonso Anozie adds: "'Stand up straight' is a lesson Sergeant Jeffreys never forgot. In fact, he ended up in the post where he had to stand up straight the most!" Another revelation about Nanny McPhee's former charges comes at the end of the film when we learn that a character we've come to know as Mrs Docherty, played by Dame Maggie Smith, is actually Baby Agatha Brown from the original film, grown old.
Another interesting aspect of a story set in wartime was that it affected the kinds of characters who would populate the world of the film. In this time and place, most of the men are away fighting. The only ones left are the older men (Mr Docherty, Farmer Macreadie), and the ones who got around enlisting either through military employment (Lord Gray's chauffeur, Blenkinsop) or cowardice and guile (Uncle Phil). That leaves a world of women and children, many of whom have had to take on roles previously held by the men who are away. Mrs Green and her children are entirely responsible for the upkeep of the farm, while the casino Phil frequents has been taken over by a woman known as Mrs Big (presumably married to the absent Mr Big). Phil is being threatened by Mrs Big's two "hit women" because all the hit men are away at the front. The hit women, Miss Topsey and Miss Turvey, seem to relish their new careers and it's easy to speculate that, like many women left behind in wartime, they may find it hard to give up those new careers when the men come marching home.
CHILDREN AT WAR
Although the film is set against the background of an unspecified war between nations, the real war of the story is that between the Green and the Gray children. When the snobbish Gray cousins, Celia and Cyril, turn up at the Greens' farm, a battle breaks out almost immediately between the boisterous farm children and their snobbish city cousins. Explains Lil Woods who plays Megsie Green: "When the cousins arrive it all goes a bit haywire because we're ready to be welcoming, but they're posh and wearing fancy clothes, and they're really rude to us, so we decide that they're in for it - and it just goes off from there really." Read more
THE HARASSED MOTHER AND THE ARMY NANNY
Maggie Gyllenhaal who plays Mrs Green explains her character's state of mind at the start of the film: "Mrs Green is at the very, very end of her rope, and then it just gets worse and worse and worse! If anyone needs Nanny McPhee it's Mrs Green. She's got the kids fighting and breaking things and hanging each other upside down, and then there's Mrs Docherty who really needs Mrs Green's help, so in every way, she is barely functioning." Read more
THE "COVERED-IN-POO PEOPLE" AND THE "PARASITIC POSHIES"
Unlike the child characters in the first film who worked together as a team against their father and their nannies, the children in "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang" are adversaries from the moment they meet. "There were only five children this time around rather than seven," says Lindsay Doran, "and that made it easier to give each of them a distinctive personality as well as a distinctive role in the story. But because each one is so different, even within their respective families, it made casting more of a challenge." Read more
THE MENAGERIE
"The animals in the first film made a big impression on the children who saw it and we realised that was one of the things we had to bring back in the new film," says Doran. "So Emma wrote in some piglets, which turn out to be very important to the plot. They're not just there to be cute, though they are certainly very entertaining; they're there to serve a purpose. But it's been so much fun having them around; they're very smart and they've done virtually every single thing we've needed them to do." Read more
THE VILLAINS OF THE PIECE
As with all good stories, there always have to be some baddies. Rhys Ifans plays Phil Green: "Phil is Isabel's brother-in-law, and whilst his brother Rory is bravely fighting for his country abroad, Phil pretends to have flat feet to avoid having to go to war. So he's just hanging around. He owns half the farm, but also owes a lot of money from gambling debts and the only way he can come good on one of his debts is to give away the farm." He continues: "For me, the key with Phil is that he is a guy who has dodged conscription and he's just a good old-fashioned coward." Read more
MR GREEN'S FANTASTICAL CONTRAPTION
Mr Green is the absent father who has had to go off to fight in the war and who has not been heard from for months. His character, however, is revealed through his playful invention - the Scratch-O-Matic - that he has created for his home, his family and his pigs.Read more
THE SORT-OF 40'S
"This is a fantasy film and we didn't want to be restricted to any particular time period or even any particular place," says Doran. "We chose not to adhere to what was accurate for the World War II period in order to make the film more delightful to look at and to make the war a metaphor for all wars. This is a classic story of a family with one parent away at war. The Green family's problems should be recognizable to the people of any country whose armed forces are engaged in a conflict away from home. The family members left behind are worried, they are saddled with responsibilities they wouldn't ordinarily have, there are financial consequences, and parenting is much harder." Read more
"THAT WHICH IS LOVED IS ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL"
A central feature of the Nurse Matilda books on which the Nanny McPhee series is based is the fact that the title character's looks change as the children's behaviour improves. These changes are never explained, but the filmmakers cite a Norwegian proverb - "That which is loved is always beautiful" - as the closest thing to an explanation they've been able to find. Everyone reacts to Nanny McPhee's hideous looks when they first see her - Mrs Green stops dead in her tracks, little Vincent makes an undisguised noise of disgust, Uncle Phil screams out loud, and Cyril describes her features as "a face that could win the war hands down." But as the children grow to love their unusual nanny, and as they themselves become more caring and generous, her hideous features melt away. Whether this transformation actually happens, or happens only in the imagination of the family, is never addressed. In the original Nanny McPhee, Mr Brown and his children notice that her face is changing, but in the new film only the animals notice - Mr Edelweiss squawks, a piglet winks. The changes happen so imperceptibly that even the audience has a hard time knowing exactly what's different from scene to scene. Read more
EMMA THOMPSON (Nanny McPhee/Writer/Executive Producer) is one of the world's most respected talents for her versatility in acting as well as screenwriting. In 1992, Thompson caused a sensation with her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel in the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster's Howards End. Sweeping the Best Actress category wherever it was considered, the performance netted her a BAFTA Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Award, New York Film Critics Award, Golden Globe and Academy Award. She earned two Oscar nominations the following year for her work in The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father. In 1995, Thompson's adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee, won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay and Best Screenplay awards from the Writers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of Great Britain, amongst numerous others. For her performance in the film she was honoured with a Best Actress award from BAFTA and nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.
In 2008, Thompson starred with Dustin Hoffman in director Joel Hopkins charming romance, Last Chance Harvey, and was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress for her performance. In 2006, Thompson co-starred, to critical acclaim, with Dustin Hoffman, Will Ferrell, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger Than Fiction, directed by Marc Forster, and produced by Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang producer, Lindsay Doran. In 2004, she brought to the screen JK Rowling's character of Sybil Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, for director Alfonso Cuaron, and in 2007, she reprised the role in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, for director David Yates. Also in 2004, Thompson appeared in her own adaptation of Nanny McPhee, directed by Kirk Jones.
Thompson is currently writing a new film version of My Fair Lady for Sony Pictures.
Thompson was born in London to Eric Thompson, a theatre director and writer, and Phyllida Law, an actress. She read English at Cambridge and was invited to join the university's long-standing Footlights comedy troupe, which elected her Vice President. Hugh Laurie was President. While still a student, she co-directed Cambridge's first all-women revue Women's Hour, made her television debut on BBC-TV's Friday Night, Saturday Morning as well as her radio debut on BBC Radio's Injury Time.
Throughout the 1980s Thompson frequently appeared on British TV, including widely acclaimed recurring roles on the Granada TV series Alfresco, BBC's Election Night Special and The Crystal Cube (the latter written by fellow Cambridge alums Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie), and a hilarious one-off role as upper-class twit Miss Money Sterling on The Young Ones. In 1985, Channel 4 offered Thompson her own TV special Up for Grabs and in 1988 she wrote and starred in her own BBC series called Thompson. She worked as a stand-up comic when the opportunity arose, and earned £60 in cash on her 25th birthday in a stand-up double bill with Ben Elton at the Croydon Warehouse. She says it's the best money she's ever earned.
She continued to pursue an active stage career concurrently with her TV and radio work, appearing in A Sense of Nonsense touring England in 1982, the self-penned Short Vehicle at the Edinburgh Festival in 1983, Me and My Girl first at Leicester and then London's West End in 1985, and Look Back in Anger at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue in 1989.
Thompson's feature film debut came in 1988, starring opposite Jeff Goldblum in the comedy The Tall Guy. She then played Katherine in Kenneth Branagh's film-directing debut Henry V and went on to star opposite Branagh in three of his subsequent directorial efforts, Dead Again (1991), Peter's Friends (1992), and Much Ado About Nothing (1993).
Thompson's other film credits include Junior (1994), Carrington (1995) and The Winter Guest (1997). She has also starred in three projects directed by Mike Nichols: Primary Colors (1998) and the HBO telefilms Wit (2001, in a Golden Globe-nominated performance) and Angels in America (2002, Screen Actors Guild Award nomination and EMMY Award nomination). Also in 2002, she starred in Imagining Argentina for director Christopher Hampton and Love Actually for director Richard Curtis. The latter film netted Thompson a number of accolades, including Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 2004 Evening Standard Film Awards, a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 2004 BAFTA Awards, Best Supporting Actress at the 2004 London Film Critics Circle Awards and Best British Actress at the 2004 Empire Film Awards.
BAFTA Award-winner and two-time Emmy nominee SUSANNA WHITE (Director) was the lead director of HBO's Generation Kill, the seven-part miniseries about the 1st Reconnaissance Marines whose unit was part of the first wave of the American military assault on Baghdad. The series was nominated for 11 Emmys including Best Director.
In 2005 she won widespread praise for her six episodes of the BBC's drama series, Bleak House based on Charles Dickens' novel. The series won a host of international broadcast awards including the BAFTA and RTS awards for Best Drama Serial. From this success White went on to direct another highly-regarded drama series for the BBC, Jane Eyre which earned her an Emmy nomination for Best Director of a Miniseries.
White began her career in documentaries; she made several for the BBC, as well as Rocket Men and Volvo City for Channel 4. In 1996 she made The Museum, depicting a tempestuous year in the life of London's Victoria & Albert Museum.
In 1997 she turned to drama with Bicycle Thieves for Channel 4, based on Whitbread prize-winning writer Blake Morrison's short story, the first of several collaborations with him. She returned to the documentary form in 2000 to pay tribute to English poet, WH Auden in Tell Me The Truth About Love, which won an Emmy nomination.White then directed drama including episodes in several series of Channel 4's Teachers which gained BAFTA and RTS nominations and Love Again, starring Hugh Bonneville, Dame Eileen Atkins and Tara Fitzgerald, a film for TV about another much-beloved modern-day English poet, Philip Larkin (RTS and Banff nominations) White has had a long interest in the relationship between mothers and nannies. She has had the help of nannies while raising her twin daughters, and has also made a documentary about PL Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins, and in doing so, was one of the last people to interview her.
THE ART OF SEQUELS
READ MORE ABOUT NANNY MCPHEE
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