There’s no denying it: Rob Marshall is the king of the contemporary movie musical. His reign began in 2002 with the best picture Oscar-winning “Chicago,” followed up by screen adaptations of “Nine” seven years later and “Into the Woods” in 2014. But his “Mary Poppins Returns”—out Dec. 19 and starring Emily Blunt in the titular role made famous by Julie Andrews—marks a first for the filmmaker: an original movie musical. While he says the prospect was something that he’s “always wanted to do”—citing made-for-the-screen musical classics like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” as his longtime favorites—he admits to feeling nervous while eyeing the “huge shoes to fill” the 1964 landmark original left at his feet.
“My goal was to really make sure that we were honoring the first film as much as we could in terms of tone and feeling,” Marshall says, adding that as a fan of the first film, he used himself as a barometer for what would work and what wouldn’t. “What would I want to see in a sequel?” he recalls asking himself. “I’d want to feel that feeling of going to that space in the world, but also something new.”
That “something new” comes first and foremost from Mary herself, which marks a musical reunion between Marshall and his “Into the Woods” Baker’s Wife, Blunt. Mary Poppins is charming and forthright, caring and scrupulous; Blunt brings just the right amount of enchantment to her own spin on Disney’s world-famous nanny.
READ: Emily Blunt Takes on the Role of a Lifetime in Disney’s ‘Mary Poppins Returns’
“For me, there was no choice,” Marshall says. “There’s a huge amount of prerequisites that this actor needs to fill to play this role, and Emily had every single one of them. You have this iconic character who is famously reserved and stern and enigmatic, [who] doesn’t reveal too much about herself; you need a great actress to play those layers. And then underneath those layers, you need to feel the child that she has inside. She needs warmth under that, and humor, which Emily has in a big way, and vulnerability. It’s important to see the human side of Mary Poppins underneath all this.”
The cast is rounded out by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, and Meryl Streep. That’s not to mention the new Banks children: Pixie Davies as Anabel, Nathanael Saleh as John, and Joel Dawson as Georgie. Mary Poppins’ return is inspired by the death of their mother, which she takes as a cue to lift spirits and remind their father, Michael (Whishaw), how to rekindle the awe she brought to his life two decades prior.
When it comes to his casting process—which here involved holding auditions for the film’s children and expansive ensemble with casting director Bernard Telsey—Marshall is quick to remind actors that no two performers bring exactly the same thing to a prospective role. The auditioning actor must harness that and embrace it.
“[Playwright] Neil Simon once said this to me: If the person who comes in does their job, you don’t have to do any work. They claim the role, and it comes to life in a way that you never expected it to,” Marshall says. “That’s the kind of thing you look for: someone who’s going to bring their own sensibility to it. I don’t teach, but if I did teach, that’s what I would tell everybody. I’d say, ‘What’s your take? Who are you?’ Make 80 percent of the character you, then adjust it to the situation and the world. There’s a truth that you’re looking for, and that’s what I look for. It’s as simple as that. Whatever your humor is, whatever your sensibility is, whatever you are, that’s really what it is.”
Ready to get to work? Check out Backstage’s musicals audition listings!