Emma Thompson on terrifying film stunt: ‘My legs were shaking’

Ahead of her new role as Miss Trunchbull in the live action remake of Matilda, Dame Emma Thompson reveals the one stunt that will stay with her for life.

Whether she’s corseted in period frocks or layered in prosthetics, Dame Emma Thompson lends a style all her own to her movie creations. But ask her co-stars, and they’ll say the two-time Oscar winner is at her most fashionable when she simply wears her heart on her sleeve.

With a CV that includes memorable roles in films that are as varied as Sense And Sensibility, Love Actually and Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, Dame Emma Thompson is not the kind of actor who could be accused of falling prey to typecasting.

Emma Tohmoson for Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. Picture: Prime Video

She has always brought complexity to the screen – whether playing good, evil or somewhere in between.

Take her latest turn – as hellish headmistress in Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical, Thompson, 63, fulfils a brief she has met for decades.

“I’m constantly looking for great, great female heroic roles and, you know, villain roles,” Thompson tells Stellar.

“That’s been a guiding principle since I was 19.”

On Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical, the film adaptation of the five-time Tony Award-winning stage production featuring music by Australian composer Tim Minchin, Thompson shared her insights and lent her support to a new generation of actors who saw her grace clearly beneath the frightful prosthetics she wore to play Miss Trunchbull.

“There are so many people watching you and you’re doing a take; it can make you a bit nervous,” Alisha Weir, who plays Matilda, tells Stellar about being on her first big-budget film set.

“But [Emma] got me just to be calm. [She said,] ‘They’re just trying to do their job, just like you, and they’re not watching everything you do.’ And so I was really just trying to be calm, and learn, and watch everything they were doing.”

That Weir would be so receptive to Thompson is no surprise.

After all, 27 years ago, Thompson did encourage a 19-year-old Kate Winslet to make sure she was eating properly during their time on the set of Sense And Sensibility and, in 2008, she told producers of Brideshead Revisited she would walk away from the project if they forced co-star Hayley Atwell to lose weight.

Emma Thomson: “It’s a great joy to work with young people like that. I was absolutely at their feet; I completely worship the ground they walk on.” Picture: Getty

“It’s just heaven,” Thompson tells Stellar of working with fresh faces of the industry.

“Younger people haven’t built up the same kind of assumptions, set of prejudices, desires and needs. They’re very open. And so, if you give out that kind of positivity, then that’s, generally speaking, what you get back.”

And so the kids working – there’s a 210-strong band of young people.”

I mean, obviously Alisha’s in a different kind of position because she’s in all the scenes and she’s on her own.”

But you see how all of those children just step right up to the plate… It’s a great joy to work with young people like that. I was absolutely at their feet; I completely worship the ground they walk on.”

In turn, the cast gave Thompson encouragement, too, especially when shooting a climactic and effects-heavy scene.

“I’ll remember being 80 feet [24 metres] up on that structure and looking down, and all the kids were down there,” she recalls.

“They were going, ‘You’ll be all right’. My legs were shaking and we were all singing live. For me, it was such an exciting thing to do, but also terrifying.

So that’s what’s going to stay with me from Matilda The Musical.”

Emma Thomson features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

She also smiles as she recalls the quiet power she portrayed in Love Actually when Karen learns her husband (played by the late Alan Rickman) has bought a romantic gift for someone else.

“Yes, you remember the feelings you had at the time,” Thompson says of creating those moments on-screen.

But what she is more interested in are the messages of empowerment she delivers through choosing her projects carefully and imbuing them with life.

“[Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical] has a very happy ending because the two people who need someone, they find each other, and that, to me, is very moving,” Thompson says. “And it reminds you that, sometimes, family is not very healthy.

“There are some families that are absolute rubbish; they hurt you and abuse you. And in that case, like Matilda, you’re perfectly within your rights to say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not right for me. I know you’re my parents or whatever, but you’re just not. You’re abusive, and I don’t want to see you anymore.’ I think that’s a fantastic thing to make clear, that that’s possible to do.”

Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical starts streaming on December 25 on Netflix.