Emily Blunt was often distracted by one of her young co-star’s “wild” ways on the set of Mary Poppins Returns.
The actress portrays the magical nanny in the upcoming Disney film, a sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins, with the musical also featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Colin Firth and Meryl Streep.
Set in 1930s London, the movie also stars Ben Wishaw as Michael Banks, with Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and Joel Dawson playing his children, and Emily has now shared that young Joel had a way of flustering her seconds before she launched into important scenes.
“That little blonde one, he’s wild. He’s so sweet. He’s called Joel,” she said of the young star during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night (14Nov18). “And there was a lot of kind of Joel wrangling on set because he was sort of crazy and had never done a film before. It was all so new to him. He didn’t know how to focus and there was a lot of, ‘OK, we’re rolling Joel.’ We’d be like, ‘Joel, focus. Joel, Joel, please. Joel we’re rolling. Joel. Joel.’ And before I had this mammoth monologue, really fast-paced, I was just trying to focus for a second and they were like, ‘Ok rolling rolling.’ And Joel would be like, ‘Emily, what do you get if you put the letter B in front of the word ‘Oobs’. And the (directors) were like, ‘Action!’ And I was like, ‘Shhh shhh…'”
Emily jokingly added: “Clearly in desperate need of a nanny. He’s so dirty that one.”
During the interview, host Jimmy also asked the British star what her two daughters, Hazel, four, and two-year-old Violet, who she shares with husband John Krasinski, thought about the movie. And she explained that Hazel appeared pretty unfazed when she saw the trailer for the first time.
“When I played the trailer for my daughter, for Hazel, she was holding my iPhone, completely impassive expression, just gave me nothing. And she was just holding it and she goes, ‘Play it again, play it again, play it again.’ It was as if she was checking, ‘Do I like it? Do I think it’s good? What am I supposed to do?’ It must be so strange,” the 35-year-old sighed.
