‘What’s under my pots?’ anger!’ Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield on the set of The Magic Faraway Tree | film

AAnyone who read Enid Blyton’s The Distant Tree novels as a child imagines themselves wandering its magical landscape. Most of us have had a favorite game, whether it’s the Land of Witches, nursery rhymes, or do as you please. Thirteen-year-old Billie Gadsdon, about to star in the upcoming film The Magic Faraway Tree, particularly loves the Land of Goodies – but that’s because when she was last there, everything around her was made of candy.

Director Ben Gregor wanted his team to interact with the fictional environment as much as possible. And so, on their soundstage in Reading, Gadsdon found herself filming in a grove of hibiscus trees, surrounded by giant flying saucer plants and beds of Haribo strawberries. “I ate a few,” she admits. “Birthday Land” was just as fun – those scenes were filmed in the middle of a giant cake, with elves skating on ice and dancing at a disco.

If that sounds strange, that’s the vibe in this beloved Blyton series, published between 1939 and 1946. Three children, forced to move to the countryside, discover an enchanted forest filled with some of the strangest characters in children’s literature, from the Saucepan Man, who wears pots, to Moonface, whose face is…well, you get the idea. Perhaps it’s sheer strangeness that has prevented it from being adapted to the screen before. Even this version has been in the works for a long time: producer Pippa Harris, at Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, made the first bid for the rights nearly two decades ago.

Simon Farnaby wrote the script. Publishers and producers hope that the film will be able to repeat the great success it achieved with Paddington. The heavyweight cast includes Nicola Coughlan, Jennifer Saunders, Simon Russell Beale and Nonso Anozie; They all appreciate the responsibility that comes with such nostalgic source material. “People are so emotional about it!” says Claire Foy, who plays Polly, the children’s mother. “They relate to these stories in a unique way.”

Foy has never been in a children’s film before: this will be her first work that she can take her 10-year-old daughter to see. “I bought her the audiobook and we listened to it together,” Foy says. “But I didn’t read it myself as a kid, so it was like discovering Harry Potter at 40!”

In the books, the children’s mother is a traditional housewife who does a lot of outings. In Farnaby’s contemporary version, Polly is the breadwinner who loses her corporate job, forcing the family to move to the countryside. The rural country life her husband dreams of downsizing to turns out to be far more basic than either of them imagined (there’s a running joke about no wifi, and Farnaby has written himself a role as a bafflingly impenetrable farmer). Against this backdrop, Fran, played by Gadsdon, discovers the distant tree and the revolving lands that visit its highest branches.

Flash forward to August 2024, and the film will reach the end of its three-month shooting schedule. Andrew Garfield, who plays the children’s father, Tim, has encapsulated his role, but is still wearing his costume when we meet him, a country shirt and rough pants that he describes as a “tomato farming” outfit. This is the second time Foy’s husband has been on screen. They co-starred in the biographical drama Breathe together nine years ago. The friendship is still there – which Foy attributes to the fact that they’re both “so silly.”

“We really enjoy each other’s company,” Garfield says. “And coming into this, and working with kids, we were pulling our tails, you know, to pick up a little bit of the slack. But they were able to find these three wonderful kids — stable, funny, joyful — who happened to be amazing actors and cast them.” Phoenix LaRouche and Delilah Bennett Cardy play Fran’s siblings, Joe and Beth; Foy describes the trio as “the most well-bred and well-behaved children she has ever met” and predicts a bright future for Gadsdon, whom she describes as “sweet, inquisitive, immature, and quiet.”

Everyone agrees that some of the most memorable scenes are the ones where they sit together as a family. At the end of the one-day shoot, a water fight escalated from pistols to buckets resulting in everyone drowning, while their final scene together was an epic spaghetti-eating contest between Gadsdon and Laroche. “It was definitely not a traditional group,” Foy says. “Ben was always able to connect with the kids in a really fun way.” He even had a different special handshake for each child: “I don’t know how you remember all three,” Gadsdon later says. “I just had a hard time remembering my memory.”

Currently, you play as Fran, who is supposedly stuck to a hibiscus tree: as soon as the director gets his close-ups, he calls the rescue squad. Anozie’s towering 6-foot-6 frame is extended nearly another foot by a majestic crescent-shaped wig from Moonface. Dustin Demery Burns, covered in 3D-printed kitchen equipment with a helmet sieve, makes an audible clatter as he makes his way to his goal.

“If I’m not in the picture, I stay as still as possible,” he says after the scene, sitting in the green room admiring the heavy costume, which — put on piece by piece — makes him look like a human buckaroo. “My shoulders hurt at the end of the day.” Since he’s the first person to play Saucepan Man, how does he explain that? “What’s underneath all the pots in his soul? Anger! No, he’s a pretty character. He’s hard of hearing because of all the rattling, but he’s kind of given in to it.”

The craftsmanship that went into the production process – from the individually handcrafted mushrooms that inhabit the enchanted wood, to the full-size replica of a Lisbon tram – is evident everywhere, not least in the ramshackle barn that looks so livable you hope they’re renting it out on Airbnb. the A piece of resistance It is, of course, the remote tree itself, which took months to build. Its design was based on several live trees discovered by Gregor and production designer Alexandra Walker, and recreated using molds.. The painstaking work on the foliage meant that at one stage the production was running an entire ‘green department’.

The impressive result can be climbed both outdoors – Bennett Cardy and Gadsdon needed lessons at a rock climbing center – and indoors. Along the way are the homes of Moonface, Silky and Dame Washalot, rendered in minute detail, and even a real “slippery slide” – where characters hurl themselves down the enclosed tube slide whenever they need to get out of the tree in a hurry. “The first time I was a little afraid to go down,” Gadsdon says, “but then, I didn’t want to stop!”

Gadsdon made her film debut at the age of six, starring alongside Antonio Banderas in Genius: Picasso. Her recent CV includes The Hack, One Day, The Midwich Cuckoos and Moonflower Murders – but this film feels like a step forward. It’s one of the longest productions she’s worked on, and nightly shoots for Land of Spells – on location in Malta – lasted until 5am, well past her bedtime. Her mother, Michelle, had read the books to her and her siblings during Covid: “We couldn’t believe it when we saw they were casting for the movie – and when I got the part, I screamed!”

Both Garfield and Foy can relate to the appeal of a simpler, more nature-focused life. “My dad is the one with the green thumb in the family, and sometimes I go and help him in his garden,” Garfield says. “But this filled me with a longing for my own version. I think it’s a longing we all have, to feel more connected to the planet we live on. Mainstream modern culture seems designed to help us forget nature and distance us from it.”

Foy, who grew up in Buckinghamshire, may live in London, but she has always loved the countryside. She remembers her childhood as a time of reading and re-reading books until their spines fell off, and “long, never-ending walks.” “I think everyone dreams of going offline and not investing in the world as it is,” she says. “I would be very happy if I could burn my phone. But then I would miss everyone. I would miss WhatsApp…” she says.

The desire to reconnect in the modern digital age is a big theme in the film. Foy spoke of her “deep hatred” of social media, as well as the “logistics” of modern parenting. “Parenting is very different now, and the film reflects that,” she says now. “Children are growing up in a world that we don’t necessarily recognize because it’s not the same as when we were younger. It’s constant mobility: How do you negotiate those things that are necessary for your existence in this world, when you also see the damage that it does?”

As a parent, she’s well aware that your child will never be that little again – which is why, she believes, Blyton’s books and this film evoke that nostalgia. “When you get older, there’s that point where the magic turns off, I think, where you stop believing and start knowing how the world works. It’s about trying to prolong that experience for as long as humanly possible.”

Does Foy still have a favorite tree? Yes, you say – the hollow beech tree on Hampstead Heath. “Even though the inside is hollow, it’s still full of leaves, and it’s still growing, which is really beautiful.” Gadsdon in the field opposite her house. “Someone did a rope swing one day, and they did it so well that it’s still up there.” A reminder to all of us, that there is still so much magic to be found in trees.