Emily Blunt wouldn’t watch ‘Marry Poppins’ when she was filming ‘Mary Poppins Returns’.
The 35-year-old actress takes over from Dame Julie Andrews as the magical nanny in the upcoming movie and she didn’t want her performance to be influenced too much by the original movie.
She said to Heat magazine: "Ultimately, I didn’t end up watching [the original].
"I had seen it as a child, so that image was sort of emblazoned in my memory but I never watched the film during the process – I just read the books.
"So however people view it, it’s my version of her. I hope people like it.
"I took her from the books and she is batty, eccentric and incredibly vain.
"It was just a joy to play somebody who knows that she is better than everybody else, but ultimately, has this incredibly warm core, and that there is this plan that she takes people on. She is magical."
And Emily credits director Rob Marshall for helping ease her fears about living up to the iconic performance of Julie.
She said: "It was the most magical experience, because Rob Marshall is so loving and nurturing. He made it feel like an intimate experience and less of what I worried it would be, which would be to try and reimagine this character that is so beloved, and played by an iconic actress like Julie Andrews."
Despite her career success, the ‘A Quiet Place’ star – who has children Hazel, four, and Violet, 22 months, with husband John Krazinski – never intended to be an actress when she was younger.
She said: "I didn’t have a burning desire for it my entire childhood.
"I was never planning on being an actress and I was going to go to university.
"My mother is a great linguist so I wanted to be just like her and I wanted to do modern languages and be a translator.
"I sort of fell into it – an agent saw a school play I did and said, ‘Oh you are good, you should do this.’ I was like, ‘OK’.
"I was 17. I sort of shrugged my shoulders and not to sound cavalier about it, but it just wasn’t my plan – it was not what I was wanting to do."
Emily Blunt reveals why she refused to watch Marry Poppins
