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Hangin' With Archives
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Nanny McPhee’s Kids :Eliza Bennett, Thomas Sangster and Sam Honywoodby Lynn B.
You misbehave, you get a cool, mystical nanny like Mary Poppins who is fun and games, right? Wrong! The naughty Brown siblings in the new fantastical film Nanny McPhee get a witchy-looking, all business nanny with warts, a huge nose, a unibrow, an awful buck tooth and a take-no- prisoners method of child rearing. Yikes! In real life, young actors Eliza Bennett, Tom Sangster and Sam Honywood got friendly, motherly and downright fun actor/writer Emma Thompson who, on the morning of our interview in Beverly Hills, spotted the kids, gave them all huge hugs and proceeded to go into character as Nanny McPhee to chase little Sam, the youngest, all over our interview room as he squealed in delight. This must have been a really fun set! Of the Brown kids, only Tom Sangster, now 15, has any real acting experience (he met Emma Thompson when they filmed Love, Actually] and he told us that he tried to keep the acting advice down to a minimum so as not to appear “bossy”. Having seen the trio in some strange and colorful period costumes in the film, it was nice to see that they were regular modern young people in cute tees, jeans, etc. for our talk about co-stars and on-set fun. Picture, blonde, pretty Eliza, cute, future hottie teen Tom and adorable precocious young Sam all lined up and trying to behave for our questions. AGW: What about working with Emma Thompson.? How important was she in this movie for you guys? Sam: She was very important because, in our relationship, she brought us all together. So, if we didn’t get on or we got irritated by something, she’d make us join back together and be friends again. Tom: Because she wrote it [the screenplay], it was her project, it was her baby. So, she had to make everything work. If our relationships didn’t work together then the film would have been a disaster. Seeing as everyone got on with everyone, it was really nice to have such a nice, down-to-earth person around. Eliza: We were very lucky because, as you probably already know, Emma is such a down-to-earth, lovely person, so it was so nice because the whole set was kind of a big family. She had an important role in the film so it was very important for her to be a nice as she was. AGW: She’s also naughty and more playful than most adults we know. Eliza: Yeah. I think that kind of helped because she joined in with what the kids were doing and all the tricks and it worked with the movie. Sam: But you’d better run for cover when you see her! She goes chasing and grabs me and it gets realllly bad after that. [we witnessed such a chase and tickle fest]. AGW: Your characters start out really misbehaving in a big way. What is the worst each of you has ever misbehaved in real life? Eliza: I chopped off my friends hair when we were about four years old. We had long hair and she chopped off mine up to here [indicates above her ear] and I chopped hers up to here. We had long hair about down to here [indicates below her shoulders]. AGW: What prompted that? Eliza: I don’t know. You know, when you’re young you want to play hairdressers and moms and dad but we played it with real scissors so it went a little bit too far. Sam: My worst is staying up late. I remember a program called “Gardener’s World”. I’d get my granny to watch it and she’d fall to sleep in the middle and I’d stay up until about ten thirty. It’s a really good trick. I recommend it to all kids in America [laughter]. AGW: What part of Emma’s make-up was the most frightening for you; the wart, the nose, the eyebrow and did she scare you when you first saw her in make-up? Sam: Inside we were a bit scared but we knew that it wasn’t actually a real person. She kept on saying she’d eaten Emma Thompson so she was quite heavy. I didn’t like the nose. It was too round. Tom: We all got to keep a nose afterwards. Sam: I got this nose and put it in the fridge, because you had to keep it in the fridge and then I lost it. I think my mom or dad must have chucked it away because it got moldy. AGW: Ewwwww. Any good memories of the food fight scene? Eliza: Yeah, the food fight was pretty good fun actually because we had our costumes on all clean and everything and then we had big, huge plates of creamy cakes and we were allowed to throw them at a green screen actually and then, not knowing, halfway through the scene, Emma Thompson and everyone, other than the kids popped up with suits so they had protection and with huge buckets of cakes and started throwing them back at us so it was really good fun because we were allowed to get messy and dirty AGW: Eliza, you are the responsible one in the film. Are you that way in real life? Eliza: Well, my siblings are older than me so we’ve kind of reached the age where we’re not playing tricks anymore but I think it’s fun playing a character that you don’t tend to be like in real life. It’s good to experience other things. Taking care of the babies and Crissy was really good fun. Tom: You were kind of the motherly character. Eliza: Because we don’t have a mother in the family, I felt that I had to take the responsibility. Tom: And in real life. All the kids, she jumped in and played with. Sam: She made us behave as well and not get into trouble. AGW: Did all the kids have fun when you weren’t shooting? Tom: Well a lot of the time we had to go to class. But it was fun anyway because it’s not like real school. We were divided into twos, like me and Eliza, because we were older, were in the higher group. But that was still quite fun. We used to muck around and got on really well. AGW: Tom, you have more acting experience, did you give anyone advice? Tom: You kind of have to judge it because if you give too much advice you can kind of sound big-headed and annoying. I suppose, sometimes if I could see someone wasn’t quite doing as they should be doing, I’d take them aside and tell them. I wouldn’t announce it to everyone, but yeah, a bit. AGW: First trip to L.A.? Where do you plan to go? Tom: I went to New York for three days for a premiere but it’s my first time in L.A. and I don’t know where I’m going to go. I haven’t thought about it yet. AGW: Universal Theme Park maybe? [Nanny McPhee is a Universal film] Sam: We’re going to see that after the Premiere actually so we’re going to dress down ready for some roller coasters, even though I hate them. I’m just going to go on the gentle ones, vertical but not too vertical because I hate big drops. AGW: Sam you love to eat jam in the movie. What food do you really like to eat? Sam: I like jam and toast but not from the pot [jar] because I hate getting sticky. I like English fried breakfasts. I like bagels with cream cheese. I like fried eggs, I like baked beans. AGW: Colin Firth plays your dad. Can you compare working with Colin Firth to working with Emma Thompson? Sam: Well, one’s a man and one’s a woman [laughter] AGW: Ooookay, smartie! You take it, Tom. Tom: Because they’re both experienced actors you can learn from both of them in different ways. Obviously, they’re playing different characters but they are two different people as well so you can’t really compare them. Colin was fun but when he wanted to work, we’d get down to it. He’d really try and push himself to the limit and Emma was kind of similar as well. When she needs to act, she will put aside all the jokes and do what she needs to do so, in that way, they’re kind of similar but when they say ‘cut’, it’s back to the fun again. AGW: How did you like your costumes? Sam: I loved my dungarees because they were dirty, they had jam on them. Instead of buttoned, it was actually tied so it make it look really old and a bit scruffy. I especially liked my shoes. They were really nice, very expensive. AGW: Did you keep anything? Sam: I got to keep my Teddy from the film and I also got Raphie’s [Raphael Coleman] one which is a pajama case and I got another one which almost had its head chopped off because Raphie, who plays Eric is supposed to have wounded all his Teddies and I took off the bandage with red paint on it and I use him in my bed. AGW: What about the girls’ costumes? Eliza: I think some people think it must have been horrible to wear such horrible colored ones. I think it’s fun to wear something that you wouldn’t normally wear so although they were kind of very tight and awkward looking, it was really good fun to wear bright colors; the lime green colors that didn’t match and black and red stripe tights. Tom: I like wearing stuff I wouldn’t normally wear. I love putting on outrageous, stupid costumes and silly hats and stuff and I really enjoyed it and didn’t want to take it off except when you get cake all over it and have to put it on the next morning and it’s covered with nasty, smelly stuff. Sam: Especially around the sleeves. It was so hot, the cream on the bun would start to melt down my sleeve, really sticky and horrible but they got a wet wipe and took it off of me. AGW: Tom, what’s it like to go from the character in Love Actually to being the mischievous one in this? Tom: Well, they are two different characters and an actor should try to go different parts or get type cast so it was a completely different part really and I like doing different parts with different characters and issues. It was fun. I liked it. AGW: What was the audition process like for you? I understand a lot of kids were considered for the roles. Sam: Very hard. There were about eleven auditions and then you’d have about two months and then skip auditions for like three months and then they’d ask you back up and eventually they might do it for another three months. One day they say ‘oh, you’ve got the part, Sam’ and I’m like woohoo! Eliza: I know they took quite a long process with the auditions because they wanted to match up the family perfect. Because the family in the film, obviously, everyone has such different characteristics, therefore, they picked different children of different characters and different ages. Through the audition process it was easy to get to know everyone. AGW: Tom, you worked with Emma before so did she call you up for the role or did you have to audition? Tom: At the London premiere of Love Actually, she asked me to come in and do an audition for Nanny McPhee. AGW: What’s next for each of you? Sam: I’ve had a few auditions and I don’t know whether I’ve got them but hopefully I’ll get [the parts] and get more time off school. Eliza: I’ve done a couple of TV films for America and I’ve got to hear back from a couple of auditions but nothing yet. Tom: I’ve finished doing a film about a month ago with Colin again, called The Last Legion that was shot in Tunisia and Slovakia and that was about fifteen weeks so that should be coming out in about a year. |
 
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