Susanna White"Actually it was animals, children, CGI and the English weather," explains Susanna White. "I think on my first feature it was slightly mad of me.
"The weather was probably the biggest challenge of them all. I’d done this big pitch that the movie would have this high summer look of harvest time and it just seemed to rain day after day. You see it now and it has this wonderful look but my memory of making the film is sitting under a dripping tarpaulin waiting for the clouds to clear."
It’s quite a change – in many respects – for Susanna. It was her first feature film after several years of documentaries and TV (including Bleak House). It was also a different weather-based challenge to her most recent project: the acclaimed Iraq War-themed TV series Generation Kill. How on earth do you go from Generation Kill to Nanny McPhee?!
"You just do, really, as a director," laughs Susanna. "My dad was Hungarian, he spoke seven languages, and I think I inherited that from him, I like flexing different muscles.
"Whatever you do, it’s all about creating a world, whether that’s a countryside village in the 1940s or the Iraq desert. The fun thing about Nanny McPhee was I had more opportunities, I could get amazing A list stars. The hardest thing was I felt people were looking down on me thinking 'well, it’s her first feature, will she be able to do it?' I had to be stronger than normal, and more assertive than normal, until people calmed down and knew the film was going to be okay."
In the year when Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman to ever win the Best Director Oscar, Susanna’s statement leads to some rather obvious questions. How difficult is it for women directors? And why has it taken so long for a woman to win the Academy Award?
Susanna pauses for a few seconds. "I think directors are like actors: we all need a stage to show what we can do. There are a lot of female executives and producers in Hollywood, because you initiate projects as a producer, you come up with an idea and go out and sell it. As a director, you need to be chosen to get that break, so you’re much more at other people’s mercy.
"There have been plenty of women out there for a while, but I think it’s been too hard and many have given up by the wayside, I think that’s why the numbers aren’t there. And the cost of childcare, the hours you work as a director are very hard to juggle with children."
As the mother of twin girls, Susanna is well aware of the challenges. Which is where nannies come in, of course. "It’s funny the relationship between mothers and nannies. We’re often defensive, you feel you ought to know it all by instinct, but I think it’s good to admit that nannies have seen more, they’ve got more experience, and you can learn from them.
"One of my favourite scenes in the film is where the young mother [Maggie Gyllenhaal] is trying to get rid of Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) as she’s standing in the doorway, and the implied criticism about how she’s dealing with her children, and they’re all flying around in the background. Emma, Maggie and I had a lot of fun with that scene, because we could all relate to it, we’ve all had nannies ourselves."
Making her feature debut with a children’s film is oddly appropriate for Susanna as the inspiration came from an unusual source. You’ll know the one. It was on Fridays. At five to five...
"When I was a Brownie I went to see Crackerjack being made," admits Susanna, "and I can remember very clearly sitting in Television Centre. All the other Brownies were trying to get on stage and win prizes and I just wanted to sit in my seat, watching the red lights come on the cameras and seeing the monitors, and realising well, that camera’s getting that shot of Leslie Crowther, and that camera’s getting that close-up of Peter Glaze. I can remember in that moment thinking 'this is the most exciting thing in the world!'"
Now that she’s had a taste of filmmaking, Susanna’s keen to keep going. "I go where the good scripts are, and where I can attract the right talent to do things, but now I’ve had this taste of big budgets, it’s very seductive." She laughs. "For as long as people will let me spend their money, I’ll be delighted to."
Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang
Emma Thompson returns to the role of the magical nanny who appears when she’s needed the most and wanted the least in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang.
In the latest instalment, Nanny McPhee appears at the door of a harried young mother, Mrs Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal; The Dark Knight, Crazy Heart), who is trying to run the family farm while her husband is away at war. But once she’s arrived, Nanny McPhee discovers that Mrs. Green’s children are fighting a war of their own against two spoiled city cousins who have just moved in and refuse to leave.
Relying on everything from a flying motorcycle and a statue that comes to life to a tree-climbing piglet and a baby elephant who turns up in the oddest places, Nanny McPhee uses her magic to teach her mischievous charges five new lessons. Joining Thompson and Gyllenhaal for the project are Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, The Boat That Rocked), as Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law, Phil, Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) as Mrs Green’s eldest son, Norman; and legendary two-time Academy Award® actress Dame Maggie Smith (Becoming Jane, Harry Potter series) as the somewhat befuddled Mrs Docherty.
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang is OUT NOW on DVD and Blu-ray!