00:00Well it was written by my son and he handed me the script and he was very nervous about me reading it
00:06and he had gone to screenwriting school where he had gotten a place and we were just so proud of
00:12him that he applied for that course and was brave enough to go ahead and do it and so when he hands
00:19me this script and I read it and I say to him well you've written a screenplay and he's saying
00:26to me no mum it's just like an assignment and I'm just trying to see if I can actually write
00:31and I said well you can and we're going to make this into a film so that's what's happening
00:38and because I felt so excited about the story it was so real all these characters were incredibly
00:43moving and I felt that how he had infused so much humour into a story that is about a complicated
00:51family processing impending loss I just thought that was so brilliant and setting it at Christmas
00:56time so you have that kind of inbuilt feeling of you know a clock ticking as the days go by and
01:02you're ramping towards that big emotional day that so many people in the year are building towards you
01:09know and this family trying desperately to get to that day so that they can experience it with and
01:15for their mother there were just so many things about it that I really loved and I felt it was also
01:19an important story because I don't know that we do particularly talk about loss as much as perhaps
01:26we could I mean it was honestly just incredible you know to be with such wonderful people Andrea I had
01:35worked with twice already Timothy Spall I'd worked with when I was 20 years old so precisely 30 years
01:42ago and and the fact that he said yes the fact that Tony wonderful Tony who amazingly I'd never
01:49met our paths had never crossed which seems so insane because actually I feel like I know her
01:55perhaps because I connect so freely with so many of the roles that she's played and have admired her
02:00forever and Johnny Flynn and Helen Mirren I mean it was like it was just insane that they all said yes we
02:07just couldn't believe it goodwill and a sense of humour mattered enormously and because I've been in this
02:15industry industry industry so long you know I've formed incredible real friendships with so many film
02:21crew members over the years particularly in England where it's much smaller you know so I was truly able to
02:27gather together my favourite people who I've ever worked with and and they all wanted to come and be part of this
02:33very collaborative really supportive working environment because I only had seven weeks to make the film we only had
02:39Helen Mirren for 16 days and I had all those seven children as well as our adult actors and it was the
02:45first time I was doing it first time for my son you know Netflix were very very supportive of that and we
02:51were able to pay it forward and we had a lot of other first-time department heads and it was a wonderful
02:56experience I think probably shooting the nativity sequence because everyone was just so excited and
03:04couldn't wait to do it and all the children were brilliant they'd all decided on what parts they wanted to play
03:09and they'd all even picked out their own costumes which was how we kind of wanted them to feel like
03:13they had ownership of this great game we were all playing and so it was just it was very very special
03:18I never ever want to sort of assume the right to suggest that there might be something they might feel
03:25but from the feedback that we're getting so far people are finding it cathartic and uplifting and so that that means a lot
03:33you
03:43yeah
03:46you
03:47yeah
Comments