Interview Emma Thompson

“Everyone tells me there are no roles for women my age, then one of the best parts I’ve ever played comes along.”

It was a relief to see Greg Wise on the red carpet for the premiere of Saving Mr Banks.

Hours before, I’d been talking to his wife, Emma Thompson, who plays Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in the film, and his immediate prospects weren’t looking good.

“My husband pointed out to me this morning that I’d created a magical nanny (with Nanny McPhee) and now I’m playing someone who has created a magical nanny,” recounted Emma. So did I suppose that behind every magical nanny is a cantankerous old bat?”

It’s one of the joys of interviewing the 54-year-old actress, writer and producer that self-deprecation, and laughter, are never far away.

The film tells the story of the Australian-born author’s fractious negotiations with Walt Disney during the making of Mary Poppins.

The feisty spinster so disliked the 1964 film, particularly the use of animation, that when Cameron Mackintosh approached her about turning it into a stage musical in the 1990s she agreed only on the proviso no-one who had worked on the movie would be involved.

“It was such a relief to be rude without any repercussions. I think we act quite a lot of the time in sort of conflict with what we really feel but can you imagine it? ‘I don’t want to go to your birthday party because I got bored of you years ago’.

“She just said what she meant. I do that sometimes and get into terrible trouble.

“That was what was so great about the role. I let out my inner prickly pear.

“Everyone tells me there are no roles for women my age, then one of the best parts I’ve ever played comes along. It was one of those scripts where you read the first page and go ‘I’m in. You don’t have to pay me.’ They did, of course. They insisted.”

Also on the film’s payroll is Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, whose welcome mat of American hospitality meets a brick wall of British correctness (Travers emigrated to London aged 24). Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson appear in flashbacks to her Outback upbringing, playing her mum and dad.

Oscar-winner Emma’s fascination with nannies extends to her adapting a script from the similarly themed Nurse Matilda books to become the Nanny McPhee movies.

“Maybe it is an alter ego and someone you wish you could be; I certainly wish I could be like that. With Walt (Disney) and Mickey Mouse and Pam (Travers) and her nanny, these are characters created out of the soul of that person when they were very vulnerable. I think that is what gives them their staying power.

“She said she didn’t invent Mary Poppins, she just arrived: most writers of genius would say the same thing. Of course, they’re not going to arrive unless you sit at the writing table with your pen that is the discipline.

“Sometimes it comes in a form that will survive any number of cultural interpretations and re-interpretations. That is what is so interesting about this movie, it’s two cultures clashing over one iconic creation.”

n Saving Mr Banks is at cinemas now.