Fri Nov 14, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger

Emma Thompson Picks 'Nanny McPhee' Over 'Harry Potter'

Actress to Skip Final Two FIlms

Emma Thompson has told MTV she’s ditching Hogwarts for her London job.  When confronted with a scheduling conundrum, reprising Professor Sybil Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or shooting the second of the Nanny McPhee films, she had to make a choice.

“I’m making my own Nanny McPhee next year,” she declared. “They mean much more to me.”

Thompson wrote and starred in the 2005 film, based on Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda novels.  She always envisioned the project as a trilogy and the second film was well along before Potter’s two-part adaptation of the final J.K. Rowling novel was determined. 

“The working title is Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang,” she said. “It’s not a sequel, actually, it’s a new story.

“[The second film] is set one hundred years later; the only thing that is the same is Nanny McPhee. It’s about two families: A family of country children, and a family of town children, [both] during the war. So it’s about evacuees, and the father is away at war. So this time, the lone parent is the mother. That’s what it’s about: The big war, and a war between these two sets of extremely different children.”

“The Harry Potters are great big franchises that are something I’m not emotionally attached to or necessarily particularly creatively attached to,” Thompson said. “That’s more like doing a turn, whereas the Nanny McPhees are something I’ve written. The art is in those films, they’re very handmade, they’re something that’s very close to me. Those are the ones I really care about.”

No word on who will replace the actress for the films.

Jump to comments (3)