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MOTION PICTURE & PRO-VIDEO in production
Best Actress BAFTA, later ‘pitched’ the premise for Nanny McPhee, Doran was immediately hooked.
She recalls: “I thought it was one of the greatest ideas for a movie I’d ever heard. It seemed to have everything you wanted, and on the basis of that conversation I got the books out of the library and could see immediately where the movie would come from.
“There surely isn’t anyone in the world who didn’t wish that someone would come and bang their stick and
make their children good. It’s com- pletely universal wish-fulfilment.”
But with the books long out of print, the problem was finding anyone who’d ever heard of them for unlike, say, Mary Poppins, there wasn’t even the cachet of a familiar title (“I think we’re darker and funnier than Mary Poppins because our children are bad,” adds Doran).
But Doran, now back in independ- ent production, still had the studio clout then to get things started. Her only concern in 1997 was: would a
wide family audience “go to see a movie in which everyone had an English accent?”
Then, she smiles, “along came Harry Potter and kinda solved the problem for us.” And is it simply serendipity that Thompson has now just joined the Potter franchise her- self, in The Prisoner Of Azkaban, as the lovably eccentric Divination Professor Sybill Trelawney?
In fact, Doran believes that Nanny McPhee might be all the better for hav- ing had such a drawn-out gestation. “In
the past seven years, the family movie has become much more of a staple of every studio. Many had tried it and failed – sometimes there was something wrong with the movie, wrong with the merchandising or simply ill-conceived for other reasons. For whatever reason, there were a lot of failed family movies.
“Now, it’s quite different and no- one’s necessarily even using that label anymore. A ‘family movie’ is now Men In Black, Lord Of The Rings, even Meet The Parents. It’s been totally re- defined. So, in a way, it’s a much bet- ter time now to make this kind of movie,” she explains.
Apart from the title, one of the most significant changes between the original pages and the film is the dis- appearance of Mrs Brown. Now Mr Brown, played by Colin Firth, is a wid- ower who is on the lookout for a new wife. Hurt and betrayed because he hasn’t told them yet about his roman- tic plans, much of the childrens’ ensu- ing mischief takes place simply to dis- tract him so he can’t find a wife.
“The basic idea,” says Doran, “is the idea of a magical nanny versus the seven most horrible children [led by the oldest Simon, played by Thomas (Love Actually) Sangster] in the histo- ry of the world. Not ugly wickedness, but rather, deep naughtiness. That’s what really makes me like it. In fact, for our story, everyone needs to be fixed in this family.”
Thompson and Doran were also keen to set their story in the context of “naughty children down the ages” so the Brown brats are portrayed merely the latest in an evolution process beginning with, says Doran, “horrible cave children, wretched ancient Egyptian children and hideously bad medieval Japanese children.”
However, the term “latest” doesn’t quite properly convey the setting for this tale. Without being too specific it might be sort of late Victorian – in fact, not unlike the charming Ardizzone illustrations in some editions of the books.
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Photo left: On the set of Nanny McPhee; top: The original book cover of Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda
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