Emma Thompson appeared on Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Zoe Hardman to discuss Nanny McPhee The Musical, revealing why she will not be reprising her famous screen role on stage following direct advice from legendary composer Stephen Sondheim.
Addressing whether she would don the prosthetic nose once again, Thompson explained, “No, I’ll tell you why. Because of course it was suggested that I do that and I had just worked with Stephen Sondheim, who of course, is a certified genius, God rest him.”
When she reached out to ask whether she should star in her own adaptation, Sondheim offered a stark warning: “Stephen, they want me to play her, what do you think? And he said, ‘you can’t do that, you will die.’ And I said ‘why?’ And he said, ‘because you are writing it and as it goes into preview... you get an audience and suddenly you know that something is wrong.’” He cautioned that she would end up spending “the whole night writing a new song,” concluding, “you just can’t do both things and you will not be able to survive that.” Thompson reflected, “it was such a good lesson to do one job.”
Reflecting on her decades in the industry and bumping into stars like Brad Pitt at event galas, Thompson admitted she still gets starstruck: “Well, I was at The Albies the other night and I bumped into Brad Pitt and practically, well, I practically sat in his lap.” Discussing how veteran A-listers interact, she noted, “I think at our age we’ve got older now, you see. We’ve been at it for a while... Brad is sixty now and I am sixty-seven. There is George and Amal [Clooney] and we’ve all come across each other over the years. And then there’s a kind of comfort about having been around this long.”
Reuniting with host Jamie Theakston, Thompson joked about their friendly greeting in the studio: “We always have a bit of a cuddle. It was a backways cuddle... See, it all goes horribly wrong when you try to describe it in words. I just sat in his lap listeners! He’s got a cozy lap!”
