‘Magic Faraway Tree’ Director Ben Gregor Knows He Has an Amazing Cast (Exclusive First-Look Image)
Before production had begun on the anticipated film adaptation of Enid Blyton‘s The Magic Faraway Tree, director Ben Gregor worried that he’d put one of his stars, Andrew Garfield, off a little bit.
“We wrote a song for the film and we sent it to Andrew early on,” Gregor explains to The Hollywood Reporter. “And I hadn’t worked with him yet and you don’t know… With actors sometimes, you can put them off.”
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But Garfield loved it. The gesture ended up being instrumental in the atmosphere that Gregor later cultivated on set — one of true-heartedness, trust, and that crucial Blyton ingredient: magic. “Everybody was putting themselves out there,” Gregor says.
The project has grabbed headlines in recent months for releasing back-to-back smash hit casting announcements: first came Garfield and Claire Foy (The Crown), then came Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) and Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), and just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Rebecca Ferguson, star of Dune, was brought on board.
Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous, Shrek 2) Nonso Anozie (Sweet Tooth, Ted Lasso) Dustin Demri-Burns (Slow Horses, The Great), Hiran Abeysekera (The Life of Pi, The Father and the Assassin), Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London, See How They Run, Chloe) as well as Sirs Lenny Henry, Michael Palin and Simon Russell Beale, line up alongside them.
The talent is eye-watering, and Gregor is well aware. The filmmaker (Britannia, Cuckoo, Black Ops, Fatherhood) was working with a script by Paddington 2 mastermind Simon Farnaby. “He’s got such a big heart, he really embraced what the actors were doing,” Gregor says of his fellow Brit. The shoot has wrapped and Gregor tells THR he is about to show the producers the director’s cut.
Based on the Faraway Tree series of novels for children by beloved author Blyton, the film follows Polly (Foy) and Tim Thompson (Garfield) and their children, Beth, Joe and Fran, (played by Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche and Billie Gadsdon), who find themselves forced to relocate to the remote English countryside. There, the children discover a magical tree and its extraordinary and eccentric occupants — a far cry away from the distractions of their 21st-century screens.
From All3Media’s Neal Street Productions, Elysian Film Group and Ashland Hill Media Finance, The Magic Faraway Tree is a film for adults and children, Gregor says, because it doesn’t do what everybody else does. “What you gotta do is just treat young people as sensible adults,” he says, practically humming at the opportunity to discuss this passion project in depth.
Below, Gregor talks to THR about coming to Blyton late in life “having been beaten away” from her books by his sisters as a child, making magic, and how he got this cast together: “It was like a religious conversion that when it landed with them, what we’re doing, they were just [like], ‘I have to be in this.'”
This seems to me that it’s a real labor of love for you.
Yeah, it is. I’ve never been surrounded by so many people with such good ideas, whether it was in design or how the camera works, or the actors and what they brought. Everybody just wanted to create, to make it together in a way that I’ve never experienced.
I was really keen to make it like a group endeavor, because I’ve never seen so many people make so many different things like, just even the sets and the workshops to make all the mushrooms and all the the magic flowers — there were people just making mushrooms for months… There’s a lot of people’s first instincts in the film, the first drafts or the thing they’ve always wanted to do or the thing that they just thought they wouldn’t get away with. And we want that energy because Blyton is wild, creative force.
Were you a Blyton fan before you got involved with The Magic Faraway Tree?
They were my sister’s books and they were very fiercely guarded. There was hell fire if I went near them so maybe they had this talismanic, unavailable quality to me. So I properly engaged with The Magic Faraway Tree as an adult. I mean, I knew it as a kid, but it felt like finally being allowed to be part of it, having been beaten away from it a few times.
Can you give us an idea of where the film is at, in terms of a timeline?
Yeah, it’s an exciting time. We are in editing. I’m about to show the producers the director’s cut. You know, Nick and Pippa from Neal Street [Productions], Danny from Elysian [Film Group] and Jane and Mel from Neal Street, too. They have been so generous with time and space to let me find the film. And they were very confident. It was a lovely experience working with them. I knew it would be. So they’re going to see it next week, we’ve rented a cinema. We’re going to show it to them on the big screen. And the editor and I, Gary Dollner, is brilliant, so it’s an exciting time where I know what it is, and they have an idea what it is, but they haven’t quite seen what it is.
And I want to ask, because I’ve been writing up the casting news as its been announced and the ensemble you’ve gathered is incredible. Claire Foy, Andrew Garfield, Rebecca Ferguson, Jennifer Saunders, Nicola Coughlan, Jessica Gunning, and that’s before we mention Sirs Lenny Henry and Michael Palin or the supporting cast. How did you do it?
Well, there is a snowball effect when people got what we were doing — it’s slightly different. And it was very true-hearted, and there was only one type of cast member who joined the film. And it was like a religious conversion that when it landed with them, what we’re doing, they were just [like], “I have to be in this.” And more and more crazy people were doing that.
Someone like, say, Nicola Coughlan, who’s basically the leader [of the group of the tree’s inhabitants], Moonface (Nonso Anozie) thinks he’s the leader of the tree gang, but it’s really Silky (Coughlan) who runs it. She was absolutely amazing and was very passionate about doing it. She’s an unbelievably perfect Silky. And Rebecca Ferguson was just crazy, at the end, and she was just just fantastic to work with, so fun and creative. I think they all like the freedom because we worked very closely with VFX…. We’re very much not hiding the VFX. We’re not saying that there are no VFX like we’ve made a magic trick. But it meant that the actors had a really good amount of stuff to see and touch and feel and do, so they could improvise. So it has this quite fresh performance style. Andrew and Claire, who were just the most amazing parents of this family. They taught me so much, and they’re so lovely, and Claire is such a natural performer. It’s just incredible how good she is. And Andrew is just brilliant.
Was it equal parts improvisation and Simon Farnaby’s script?
Simon Farnaby is a fantastic writer who I’ve known for many years through comedy, but I’ve absolutely always loved his work. He’s got such a big heart, he really embraced what the actors were doing. So we would rehearse, and then I’d collate all the notes from the rehearsal of the actors’ ideas here and there. I’d send them to him. He would mostly love them and then augment them. So the next day when they came into rehearsal, we got new pages, and they’d had a pass from Farnaby on them, and they felt suddenly like, “Wow, we’re not just being given lip service.” A lot of people get given lip service in film, I think… And we have a song.
In the film?
We were going to do a cover, but I was like, “I want our own song.” I wanted “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, kind of thing, because it’s symbolic. The dad, who’s Andrew Garfield, he’s a bit of a Captain Fantastic meets Mosquito Coast visionary, who wants to save his kids from screens and put the family back together. And then circumstances conspire to force them to take this opportunity and go where there’s no Wi-Fi and no electricity, and it’s how those kids react. There’s a scene early on in the film where he plays this song, the family song and they can’t stand it. They leave him there. Then the kids later sing the song. So the song is really important. And then with the composer, Isabella Summers, who’s one half of Florence and the Machine — she’s the Machine — she’s a brilliant and really great person. We wrote a song for the film and we sent it to Andrew early on. And I hadn’t worked with him yet and you don’t know, with actors sometimes, you can put them off, but I wanted to show what we’d done. And he absolutely loved it. And because we put ourselves out there, we earned the trust. So everybody was putting themselves out there.
How was it working with the kids, Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Billie Gadsdon and Phoenix Laroche?
The kids themselves are almost the triumph of the movie. The performances are so strong from them. They’re the three main kids. They’re just brilliant. Because if you have bad kids in this, you’ve got a bad film whatever way you cut it. They are so far from annoying, they’re very lovely and very great. And really hold the screen, hold the space. They feel so realistic. Their emotional trajectories over the film feel so relatable for anyone who’s like, tried to battle their kids over screens, or everyone who’s seen the light in their children’s eyes dim a bit with too much screen time. It’s about the light coming on in their eyes and that’s really what the film is.
You speak so eloquently and passionately about it.
I’m so sorry. You can happily invoice me after this.
Definitely not! I wonder how you strike that balance between making a film that resonates with adults just as much as it does children?
There’s a really simple answer to that, which is that you definitely don’t try and do what everybody does. When people make stuff for kids, they have loads and loads of kid bits and then adult bits, right? That just doesn’t work. What you gotta do is just treat young people as sensible adults. Engage them, tell them a proper story, make it funny, but make it make sense. When we go to the cinema, we want to play. It’s like going to a playground or a gym. That’s a child-like instinct. We’ve all got that inside us. So if you make a really true-hearted film for young people, adults will love it. Look at Paddington 2, look at The Sound of Music. Look at a really good family film animation that does so well. Why am I crying two minutes into Up? This isn’t real. Those are cartoons. If you’re generous to your audience, if you’re generous to how they’re feeling, they’ll respond.
Filmmaking is boring. My basic tenet is filmmaking is boring, okay? And that’s helps you get through the day. Actors, they want to make something great, but they want to make something the idea and finish a bit early, or make something great and nobody uses their temper. Some think you need stress to be brilliant. I personally don’t think you do. But, of course, there’s many brilliant, moody directors. They’re very, very good, but on the less moody side. With the kids, we had little rituals we would do for getting energy up and funny high five things. We had a really good first AD, Lydia [Currie], she was very good with them too. Because there’s a lot of hours and things with how long they can be on set for [so the children] don’t get too tired. And we wanted to do night shoots. We wanted to do ambitious things, because the world has to be spectacular and that sometimes meant shooting at night, but I feel like the kids had a great time.
Well, I’m even more excited to see it now.
I wish we could talk for another three hours. I’d still be able to keep going. It’s crazy, isn’t it?
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