Emma Thompson may be best known as an actress, winning an Oscar for Howard’s End (1992) and nominated for three more for her roles in Remains of the Day (1993), In the Name of the Father (1993), and Sense and Sensibility (1995)—not to mention awards for her stunning portrayal of a woman dying of cancer in the made-for-TV movie Wit (1999).
But what satisfies Thompson most is what goes on behind the scenes—and indeed, long before the first scene is even shot: Writing. Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, and more awards for writing Wit. (She also helped fine-tune the script for the recent Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley.)
Quite the resumé. And yet, Thompson says she’s proudest of her latest project, Nanny McPhee, in which she stars as a magical—and physically hideous—British nanny whose assignment is to bring order to a chaotic home with a single dad and seven very naughty children … who specialize in driving nannies away. But they won’t be getting rid of this nanny, not till she’s taught them—and their father—five important lessons, including some they’ll have to learn the hard way. And with each lesson learned, one of Nanny McPhee’s ugly features—a wart here, an exaggerated buck tooth there—disappears. Magically, of course.
Thompson, 46, wrote the screenplay, adapted from a series of children’s books about Nurse Matilda. It was a labor of love that took some five years, but Thompson is more than thrilled with the payoff—a film that the whole family can enjoy.
What attracted you to this story?
Emma Thompson: I like it because it has everything in it. The first thing I was attracted to was the fact that this fantastically ugly, rather baleful-looking person turns up, and she isn’t nice and sweet. And she helps the children by giving them space to really consider what they’re doing, and to work things out for themselves. And I liked the physicality of it; I adored the fact that her face changes.
When writing the script, we had to give the children reasons to be naughty, because most children aren’t naughty for no reason at all. I enjoyed developing that line of the story, and as we went on with this process, it became clear that it was a profoundly layered story. And by the end, you had to involve the father and what lessons he had to learn. So what had started off as rather a simple idea, turned into something like a myth or a fable that had all those layers.
This isn’t a Mary Poppins type of magic nanny; she’s doesn’t just make everything perfect in the blink of an eye. There are good parenting skills on display here, with the children learning lessons on their own—sometimes the hard way—while Nanny McPhee sits back and observes.
Thompson: It’s true, especially about the stillness and the waiting. Her parenting skills are mammoth. But she’s also a stranger, and it’s much more difficult to use those things as a real parent. You can’t be mysterious if you’re a mom; you’re there the whole time. But you can employ the methods of patience, silence, waiting, observation and attention.
Have you had to work those things into your own role as a mom?
Thompson: Oh sure. My daughter Gaia is 6. Absolutely, I’ve had to really develop patience in particular. We say patience is a virtue, but it’s more than a virtue. When you look at people like the Dalai Lama or Zen Buddhist masters, they’ve burnt the ego out of themselves so that it no longer exists. Nanny McPhee has no ego at all. She’s just there.
And you’re not there yet?
Thompson: Sadly, no! Because I am an actor, and therefore a complete and utter showoff, with a very difficult and wayward ego. It’s ghastly. And so when you lose patience as a parent, you think to yourself, How could I have failed again? But the wonderful thing about children is that you have the chance the next day to try again and to get it right.
OK, so you don’t have Nanny McPhee’s patience. In what ways are you like her?
Thompson: Well, I get a bit warty from time to time! I suppose she’s funny sometimes and she’s loving, so I could do that. But her love is … it’s not like it’s withheld, but it’s a very still thing—more of an understanding than anything else. And she’s not asking to be loved back; she doesn’t want anything back. And of course she gets it by not asking for it.
One would think the five lessons would be about character—honesty, patience, and so on. But the first three lessons are about getting up, getting dressed, and going to bed when told. They seemed like such trivial things, almost as if Nanny McPhee was “wasting” three of the five lessons. But as the movie progresses, you realize they’re not wasted, because there are other subtle lessons being learned in that process.
Thompson: Exactly. The nature of those lessons are rather ironic. When she says, “Lesson One, to go to bed when you’re told, is complete,” it’s like the understatement of the century, isn’t it? Because Lesson One, of course, involves them understanding the logical conclusion of certain behavior. You know, there’s a profound and subtle undercurrent in that lesson, that challenge that she lays down at Simon’s [the oldest child] feet—simply to obey. And all the lessons are like that except Mr. Brown [the father]. When she tells him that his lesson is “to listen,” she says that’s the most important lesson of all.
Which of the five lessons has been easiest for your daughter?
Thompson: Going to bed is fine, because bedtime has always been a really important time of day for us. That’s when we read stories and talk about the day and have a bath. I’ll read her a story in bed always and sing her sleep. It’s a habit we’ve had for years and years. It’s a really nice, peaceful time of day.
What are you reading with her these days?
Thompson: She’s absolutely obsessed with The Adventures of TinTin at the moment. TinTin is a little Belgian reporter who goes on lots of adventures. Kids love them. They’re beautifully drawn, wonderful books.
Have you ever had to hire a nanny?
Thompson: We have the most wonderful nanny. She’s actually now my nanny in a sense, like my personal assistant. And her daughter is my goddaughter. She came on board with the family to help out when Gaia was nine months old, and she’s now a member of the family really.
Does she have some of Nanny McPhee’s qualities?
Thompson: She does, actually. She’s a deeply wonderful woman, very principled and very funny and very wise. And none of us can live without her. Gaia doesn’t really need a nanny anymore; my husband, Greg, and I are around most of the time. But if suddenly one of us is working for any length of time, we’ve got an extra parent.
What do you hope parents will take away from the movie, and what do you hope children will take away?
Thompson: For both sides, principally, joy—a feeling of great joy about the fact that there can be chaos and then there can be harmony … and that both things are important.
For parents, just that sense of being able to really listen and pay attention to your children. And also to allow them in, because children understand life in the midst of chaos much better than we do. We can learn so much from them, and we tend not to. Don’t underestimate them; Nanny McPhee certainly doesn’t. She thinks they’re full of wisdom.
And for kids, I hope they’ll take away a sense of being able to solve their own problems. And also to protest; protest is necessary.
What do you mean by that?
Thompson: I think one of the wonderful things is at the end of the movie, when Nanny McPhee actually encourages the children that it is correct for them to make a protest. Children don’t often have the confidence to protest against bad behavior by adults, because they think adults are right all the time. They should be encouraged to understand that sometimes adults are very, very wrong. That’s why it’s important that when we make mistakes as parents, we get the opportunity to say to our children, “I got that wrong.”
If you do that within a loving environment—you, the parent, the all-knowing, omniscient, omnipotent person, admitting to your wrong apologizing for it—then you’re laying the ground for their understanding that other people can get things wrong, and that they can demand an apology. It’s terribly important.
Which do you find more difficult, acting or writing?
Thompson: Writing. Writing is a million times more difficult.
Sometimes the things that are harder give us more satisfaction when we’re done. Do you find that with your writing?
Thompson: Totally. There’s no question about that. I would say that to any child—if something’s really difficult, it’s fine to stop if you think you can’t do it. But, if you think that maybe if you just hung on a little bit longer and you can do it, the feeling of satisfaction that you will get is second to no other feeling.
What is your proudest project, either as a writer or as an actor?
Thompson: This one, because it’s just everything I wanted it to be. It was a very difficult thing to achieve, and I think we’ve achieved it.
You won all those awards for Sense and Sensibility, and yet you don’t even hesitate to mention this over that.
Thompson: Well, awards are wonderful things, but the act of making a piece of work is a very profound act and it’s quite a lot of work. Of course I am so proud of Sense and Sensibility, and I absolutely adored it. And it may well be a better film, I don’t know. I can only say that I’m proudest of this because I think it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.
When you were a kid, did you want to be an actress, a writer, or both?
Thompson: I didn’t want to be either of those things. I just read books endlessly. And I did a lot of sort of social work. I worked with handicapped kids and elderly people. And I think I probably thought I would be perhaps a development worker, maybe doing some service overseas. But when I got to university, I discovered comedy; then I thought I would make a living being a comic. Then I sort of fell into acting accidentally when I was about 27 and thought, This is fun. It’s much less hard than comedy. It’s a great joy. I’m very fortunate.
Is there anything else about Nanny McPhee you’d like to add?
Thompson: It is a movie for everyone. One of its biggest fans is my father-in-law, who is 75. He’s sort of a committed socialist, and not someone I expected to like it at all. But he loved it. It’s nice to make entertainment that we can enjoy together, entertainment that really does have a reality to it and an honesty to it—which I think is a very hard thing to do, but it’s a very important effort to make.
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