Urban kids sometimes can't relate to their country cousins. If you rock suburbia, you might think that city kids are stuck up. The young Brit actors in Nanny McPhee Returns learned that they can all get along great even though they hail from totally different backgrounds.
City-born 15-year-old Eros Vlahos thinks he's lucky to play urban snob Cyril and be flanked in the film by pretty sea-side-born 13-year-old Rosie Taylor Ritson as his sister Celia, and cute, 12-year-old, farm-dwelling brunette Lil Woods, who co-stars as the duo's poor country cousin in the film.
In Beverly Hills the actors are telling Kidzworld what it was like to work with the fun-loving nanny herself, Emma Thompson, and get to "play" in the mud and do fun action fights, interact with synchronized swimming pigs and generally have a blast. Pull up a chair and join the dish!
Kidzworld: Had you all seen the first "Nanny" film?
Nanny McPhee Returns
Eros: Yeah, we'd all seen it.
Lil: I spent most of the first film underneath my seat in the cinema but after that I got a bit more used to it. I must have watched it about five times before I knew I was being cast for it.
Rosie: It's one of those films which you always have on DVD in your home either always playing in the background, something always in the DVD player. It's a timeless film.
Eros Vlahos and Rosie Taylor Ritson
Kidzworld: We understand that Nanny herself, Emma Thompson, jumped in the water and swam around to give you something to look at when you were supposed to be watching the magical pigs synchronized swimming. Describe what that was like.
Nanny McPhee Returns
Rosie: [laughing] Yeah, we didn't expect that. “Oooo, right. That's different.”
Lil: Then we burst out laughing, which was the reaction they wanted.
Rosie: She was really committed to it, too.
Eros: She started going underneath the water like that [he demonstrates, moving his arms in synchronized swimming mode].
Kidzworld: When you weren't looking at Emma, what were you really looking at?
Rosie: Me and Lil and Oscar, who plays Vincent in the film, were looking at long sticks with tennis balls and tape on them and Emma said, “Oh no. This doesn't work. We can see that you're not laughing.” So the next take she got pushed into the water fully clothed. It was really cold and she was in her jumper and she started committing to it by doing all the synchronized swimming.
Lil: So the reaction you see in the film, that's us laughing about Emma.
Kidzworld: How difficult was the scene in which you are all basically roughing yourselves up, pulling your own hair, etc. [due to Nanny McPhee's magic]? It was choreographed, right?
Rosie: Yes. The choreographer actually played a bit part in the film. He's the pilot of the plane. That was Toby.
Lil: We got to put our own input into it, too. Like Eros, he was planning to fly down the table.
Eros: Yeah, had to. We were all giving suggestions on how we could hurt ourselves.
Kidzworld: Did anyone actually get hurt?
Rosie: I think you were more likely to get hurt if you were fighting someone else. Or you could pull your nose and say, “Ow, that hurt a bit too much [and stop].” We'd do that more often.
Rosie Taylor Ritson
Kidzworld: So you did all your own stunts?
Eros: Yeah, apart from I couldn't fly down the dining room table. They wouldn't let me do that.
Rosie: Health and safety reasons.
Eros: They had an Eros stunt double, which was funny because he did it for real and they put me under the table. He slid over and I popped up. I was sitting under the table and see this body just falling in front of me and he was covered in all this broken china.
Kidzworld: Was the mud at the farm as big of a challenge as it looked like it was?
Eros: Yeah. Everything moved in slo-mo. All that heavy gear had to be moved by hand through thick mud.
Lil: It took 10 strong guys lifting things up. That camera is not very light at all. And nine times out of 10, you'd put your foot down in the mud and raise it up and there'd be no shoe. You'd have to go round and find your shoe and put your foot back in it.
Kidzworld: You were all fighting intensely through some of the movie. What did you do when they yelled “cut?” Laugh and joke?
Lil: Yeah, we were like, “Oh, that was a good take.”
Rosie: We'd make sure everyone was all right because you could actually really hurt someone.
Eros: You'd be wrestling with each other and “Cut! Oh, yeah, I liked that one.”
Kidzworld: Riding in the car when Cyril and Celia were arriving at the farm, Rosie, you were really smacking Eros hard with that box.
Eros: Yeah, that hurt a lot, actually.
Rosie: That was the first thing we actually filmed.
Eros: I was holding up the box of marshmallows as a shield and we looked afterwards and it had big dents in it. That could have been me! I made a mistake there, too. I ate too many and then I had to repeat it. We did like seven takes and, by the last one, they just wouldn't go down. Eww, yuck.
Kidzworld: Lil, you come from a farm or grew up on one?
Lil: Yeah. I live on a farm and we rescue animals. We have pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, dogs, everything you can imagine.
Kidzworld: Eros, your scene with your dad, played by Ralph Finnes, he's so stern. Was that hard for you?
Eros: Well, the good thing when we played that was Ralph was very serious and Emma, I think, had said to him not to talk to us too much beforehand because, when we went to actually film it, he was there very stern and that was really good because you could just play off that. Because we hadn't gotten to know each other, there was that hostile feel to the scene. But, after we'd done it, he was all friendly and really sweet.
Kidzworld: Lil, your character Megsie wears a tool belt and is all handy with fixing things. Are you at all like that?
Lil: I suppose I am. I helped make the goats' pens and things. I do help out but I'm definitely less of a tomboy. I'm more girlie.
Kidzworld: What is a dream role for each of you?
Rosie: I love really serious roles like in books where there's a death or an early pregnancy. I really like that because it's probably something that will never happen to you. It's then something that you can experience [as an actor] without really experiencing it.
Eros: I'd like to do comedy. There's so many opportunities to do something that you don't normally get to do. I think that's the best thing about being an actor. You get to be a posh child or be a farmer or do all these different things. I'd like to do comedy character parts, really.
Lil: I know it sounds a bit shallow but I'd love to be in one of those Rom/Coms like Notting Hill or Love, Actually or one of those because they're just really fun and sort of funny and you get to really play around with your character.
Kidzworld: How do you all like it in the U.S.?
Eros: It's great! Everything is bigger and cheaper.
Lil: The food is ginormous!
Rosie: Huge portions.
Eros: And the cars, wow they're big!
Lil: And no one walks in America. We were walking down to get some food and we got really strange looks.
Kidzworld: Who liked their outfits in the film?
Lil: Well, everyone else got sort of dressed up and I had dungarees. Sometimes I got a new blouse and that was really, really exciting for me. I was like, “Ooooo, do you like my blouse?”
Lil Woods
Kidzworld: Would anybody wear anything they wore in the film for real?
Eros: My pajamas. My pajamas were really comfy. They were silk.
Lil: I loved my pajamas even though they're kind of tomboyish, but they were really comfy pajamas.
Rosie: I got to actually keep my pink dress. They made 12 copies because they knew I'd be absolutely shattered with mud and gloop and there was one that was perfectly clean and they said I could have it.
Kidzworld: Rosie, you wear Maggie Gyllenhaal's character's wedding dress at one point. Did they take that up for you to fit or...?
Rosie: The costume designer had to hoist up all of it and tie it with pins but that wedding dress was almost a fly catcher.
Lil: The netting had 10 bees in it and we thought we'd get stung.
Kidzworld: Do you all think that kids from the countryside and kids from the city can relate and be friends?
Lil: I was originally from a biggish town and I switched my lifestyle and I've made friends with some really great people where I live.
Rosie: I live in Brighton, which is a kind of mixture of the city and the countryside. We've got towns but also woods so I live in the complete middle.
Eros: Yeah, us, as a group of kids are kind of proof of that because Lil comes from a farm and me and Asa [Butterfield who plays Norman in the movie] definitely come from the inner city and Rosie is in the middle and we all got on really well. I think that divide is fiction.
Kidzworld: What music are you all into?
Rosie: I love Mika. I sing to that and get very annoying after a while.
Lil: I love Mika and I'm not sure if I love Lady Gaga but I love dancing to her.
Rosie: And I like Lily Allen as well.
Eros: I'm not very big on the whole music thing. I'd like to be. I just listen to old '80s music.
Rosie: Recently I've been listening to Taylor Swift and I like The Beatles.
Kidzworld: Did anyone grow up with a nanny at home?
Lil: My mom works from home so I've never had a nanny but I've had a couple of babysitters but they were my mom's friends daughters but they were really nice so I wasn't naughty with them.
Rosie: I've had a few nannies over the years and some of them were nice and some weren't very nice.
Eros: I didn't have one. I babysit my brother and that's tough. He's eight years younger than me. Don't give him Coca Cola is the rule I go by [laughter].
Kidzworld: Are you all homeschooled? What do your friends think about you acting?
Lil: I go to a public school. I'm a normal person at school and then I come over here and I'm doing all this stuff and I'm going to go back home and just go to the beach with my friends.
Eros: My friends are pretty cool about it. We don't really mention it, which is good. They are themselves and I'm myself around them and they don't act differently. I like that.
Eros Vlahos
Kidzworld: How do you all keep level-headed at home?
Eros: On set everyone is so nice to you: “Would you like some water or food?”
Rosie: “Are you OK? Are you sure you're okay?”
Eros: And I think it's good when you go home because they're just like, “Oh, get your own drink.”
Kidzworld: Why do each of you think kids will enjoy this movie?
Rosie: It's a bit of everything for everybody. For the parents, there are sad bits where you can just see them crying their eyes out and for our age group [young teens] there are some really funny lines and for younger kids, me and Lil were just out in the pool [at the hotel] and we overheard about five eight-year-olds talking about how much they love Nanny McPhee and they didn't even know we were there.
Lil: They were saying the first thing they loved were the pigs and the second was the motorbike [the cycle and sidecar that Nanny drives] and their third favorite thing was Lil, yay!
Lynn Barker, an editor and entertainment journalist for several websites, magazines and newspapers, has been active in the entertainment industry for many years.
