OFTEN hailed as one of the finest actors of his generation, Ewan McGregor, who plays the title character in the new film Christopher Robin, consistently captivates audiences with a diverse lineup of roles across a multitude of genres, styles and scopes. He was recently seen playing two leading roles in FX’s Emmy-winning drama Fargo. He received critical acclaim for his role as brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy in the season three anthology, winning the best actor in a miniseries or television film award at the 2018 Critics’s Choice Television Awards and the 2018 Golden Globe Awards.
On the film side, McGregor will next be seen in Drake Doremus’s Zoe, opposite Léa Seydoux and Theo James. He reprised his Trainspotting role as Renton, opposite Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle, in T2, which was released in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2017, and in the United States on March 17, 2017. Additionally, McGregor starred in Disney’s live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, lending his voice to the role of Lumière. The film has amassed more than $1 billion worldwide since its March 17, 2017, release date.
McGregor currently stars in the heartwarming live-action adventure, Disney’s Christopher Robin, in which the young boy who embarked on countless adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with his band of spirited and lovable stuffed animals, has grown up and lost his way. Now it is up to his childhood friends to venture into our world and help Christopher Robin remember the loving and playful boy who is still inside.
Now grown-up, Christopher Robin is stuck in a job where he is overworked, underpaid and facing an uncertain future. He has a family of his own, but his work has become his life, leaving little time for his wife and daughter. Christopher has all but forgotten his idyllic childhood spent with a simple-minded, honey-loving stuffed bear and his friends. But when he is reunited with Winnie the Pooh, now tattered and soiled from years of hugs and play, their friendship is rekindled, reminding Christopher of the endless days of childlike wonder and make-believe that defined his youth, when doing nothing was considered the very best something. Following an unfortunate mishap with Christopher Robin’s briefcase, Pooh and the rest of the gang including Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger, step out of the forest and venture into London to return the crucial possessions…because best friends will always be there for you.
Disney’s Christopher Robin is directed by Golden Globe nominee Marc Forster. The film opens in Philippine cinemas on August 1.
How familiar were you with the characters created by A.A. Milne?
I remember the books, obviously. They were read to me when I was a little boy and I remember being very fond of them, and I read them to my children as well. I had a bear like Winnie the Pooh…it was a sort of old-fashioned bear with arms and legs that had those funny joints. It wasn’t a Winnie the Pooh bear, but it was very much like him. And when I acted with our Winnie the Pooh, it reminded me of my old bear.
Can you talk about the animal characters in the film?
The creatures that they’ve made or designed for this film are amazing. They’re amazingly characterful just sitting still.
What attracted you to this role?
I was quite charmed by the script and loved that they made Christopher Robin a man my age and that Winnie the Pooh comes back to him at a difficult time in his life. I found that really moving. Christopher Robin is the father of a daughter who he’s not very close to, and he recognizes that and would like to be closer to her. And certainly, you get the feeling that she would like to be closer with her dad as well, and there’s something about this coming together of a father and his daughter that really appealed to me as a father of girls.
What can you tell us about the sets?
Looking at our sets and the stuff we’ve done outdoors on the streets where we’ve turned the streets of London into 1949 London streets, it looked so real. I’ve done lots of period things and the danger with period films is that they can become sort of in your face and you can see the period. But on this film somehow it didn’t…it just felt very realistic. And I think it was due to our talented production design and costume design.
How was it working with director Marc Forster?
Because of Marc and the people he chose to make this film with, like our cinematographer Mattias Königswieser, who did an amazing job, and the beautiful exterior and interior sets…everything looked absolutely beautiful and classic and real.
Talk about Hayley Atwell, who plays your wife Evelyn in the film.
I love Hayley. She and I did a Woody Allen film with Colin Farrell some years ago called Cassandra’s Dream. I think it might have been her first movie out of drama school, but it was fun working with her on that. So I was happy when Marc told me that he was thinking about casting her in this.
How about Bronte Carmichael, who plays your daughter Madeline?
Bronte’s lovely…she was so natural and, again, so real. She is so lovely when she’s acting because she’s totally unaffected. I don’t know if it was her first film or not, I think it might have been—her parents are actors too, I think, and they’re lovely people—and she was just really, really good and a total sweetheart.
How was it working opposite a stuffed bear?
In this film we had to do takes with the hero teddy bears (they call them stuffies)…now I don’t know if that was an Americanism or a filmism, but they were basically teddy bears. So when I did the first takes, I did those with Pooh, and what Marc Forster did brilliantly was cast players for Pooh, Tigger, Kanga and Eeyore, actors who stood in for each of them. The film wouldn’t be nearly as affective, and the acting wouldn’t feel as real and as good if it wasn’t for those actors playing the characters.
How did the stuffed animals look?
They looked beautiful and very real with a sort of aged look to them…like Winnie the Pooh had a little balding patch on his tummy. They all looked like they had been in a toy box for 30 years.
Were you able to relate to the character of Christopher Robin?
I really like Christopher Robin. I really liked playing him, and I felt like I wanted to play him—not him particularly—but this character, I feel like I’d had in me for a long time.
What do you think audiences will take away from the film?
I think people will be surprised and I think it’s probably what Walt Disney wanted from the beginning…a film that is for children, but not just for children.