Anyone who read Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree novels as a child has imagined themselves roving through their magical landscapes. Most of us had a favourite, be it the Land of Wizards, or Nursery Rhymes, or Do-As-You-Please. Thirteen-year-old Billie Gadsdon, about to star in the highly anticipated film adaptation, The Magic Faraway Tree, particularly loves the Land of Goodies – but that’s because when she was last there, everything around her was made of sweets.
Director Ben Gregor wanted his cast to interact with the fantastical surroundings as much as possible. And so, on their sound stage in Reading, Gadsdon found herself filming in a grove of marshmallow trees, surrounded by giant flying-saucer plants and Haribo strawberry beds. “I did eat a few,” she confides. The Land of Birthdays was just as fun – she was filmed in those scenes in the middle of a giant cake, as rollerskating elves disco-danced by.
If it sounds trippy, that’s the vibe in this most beloved of Blyton’s series, published between 1939 and 1946. Three children, forced to move to the country, discover an enchanted forest full of some of the weirdest characters in children’s literature, from Saucepan Man, who goes about wearing saucepans, to Moonface whose face is … well, you get the idea. Perhaps it’s the sheer oddness that has prevented it being adapted for screen before. Even this version has been long in the making: producer Pippa Harris, at Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, first bid for the rights nearly two decades ago.
Simon Farnaby has written the script; the publishers and producers will hope the film can replicate the extreme success he had with Paddington. And a heavyweight cast includes Nicola Coughlan, Jennifer Saunders, Simon Russell Beale and Nonso Anozie; all of them appreciate the responsibility that comes with such nostalgic source material. “People get so emotional about it!” says Claire Foy, who plays the children’s mother, Polly. “They’re attached to these stories in a unique way.”
Foy has never been in a children’s film before: this will be the first work she has made that she can take her 10-year-old daughter to watch. “I bought the audiobook for her and we listened to it together,” says Foy. “But I didn’t read it myself as a kid, so it’s been like discovering Harry Potter at the age of 40!”
In the books, the children’s mother is a traditional housewife who makes a lot of picnics. In Farnaby’s modern-day adaptation, Polly is the breadwinner who has lost her corporate job, compelling the family to decamp to the countryside. The rural idyll to which her husband dreams of downsizing turns out to be a lot more basic than any of them imagined (there’s a running joke about the lack of wifi, and Farnaby has written himself a role as a bafflingly impenetrable farmer). It’s against this background that Fran, played by Gadsdon, discovers the Faraway Tree, and the rotating lands that visit its topmost branches.
Rewind to August 2024, and the film is reaching the end of its three-month shooting schedule. Andrew Garfield, who plays the children’s father, Tim, has wrapped his part, but is still in costume when we meet, a rustic shirt and rough trousers number he describes as his “tomato-growing” outfit. This is the second time he has been Foy’s on-screen husband; they co-starred in the biographical drama Breathe together nine years ago. The friendship still endures – which Foy puts down to the fact that they’re “both quite silly”.
“We just really enjoy each other’s company,” says Garfield. “And coming to this, working with children, we were girding our loins to, you know, pick up a little slack. But they’ve managed to find and cast these three remarkable children – grounded, funny, joyful – who also happen to be incredible actors.” Phoenix Laroche and Delilah Bennett-Cardy play Fran’s siblings, Joe and Beth; Foy calls the trio “the most well-brought up, well-behaved children I’ve ever met” and predicts a bright future for Gadsdon, who she describes as “gentle, curious, unprecocious, and calm”.
Some of the most memorable scenes, all agree, were the ones where they just got to lark around as a family. At the end of one day’s shoot, a water fight that escalated from pistols to buckets left everyone soaked, while their final scene together was an epic spaghetti-eating contest between Gadsdon and Laroche. “It was certainly not a conventional set,” says Foy. “Ben was always able to communicate with the kids in a really fun way.” He even had a different special handshake for each of the children: “I don’t know how he remembered all three,” Gadsdon says later. “I found it hard to remember just my one.”
At present, she is on set as Fran, supposedly stuck to one of the marshmallow trees: once the director has his close ups, he calls for the rescue squad. Anozie’s towering 6ft 6in frame is extended almost another foot by Moonface’s majestic crescent-moon wig. Dustin Demri-Burns, covered in 3D-printed kitchen equipment with a sieve for a helmet, clatters audibly on his way to his mark.
“If I’m not in shot, I stay as still as possible,” he says after the scene, sitting in the green room contemplating the heavy costume, which – put on piece by piece – makes him look like a human Buckaroo. “My shoulders do ache by the end of the day.” Given that he is the first ever person to play Saucepan Man, how is he interpreting it? “What’s underneath all the saucepans in his soul? Rage! No, he’s a lovely character. He’s a bit hard of hearing, because of all the clanking, but he’s sort of resigned to it.”
The craftsmanship that has gone into the production – from the individually handmade mushrooms that populate the enchanted wood, to a full-size replica of a Lisbon tram – is evident everywhere, not least in the tumbledown barn that feels so livable you hope they’ll rent it out on Airbnb. The pièce de résistance is, of course, the Faraway Tree itself, which took months to build. Its design was based on various living trees scouted by Gregor and production designer Alexandra Walker, and recreated using moulds. The painstaking work on the foliage meant that at one stage the production operated an entire “department of green”.
The magnificent result can be climbed externally – Bennett-Cardy and Gadsdon needed lessons at a rock climbing centre – and within. Along the way are the homes of Moonface, Silky and Dame Washalot, rendered in infinitesimal detail, and even a real-life “slippery slip” – the characters hurl themselves down its enclosed tubular slide whenever they need to exit the tree in a hurry. “The first time I was a bit scared to go down it,” confides Gadsdon, “but after that, I didn’t want to stop!”
Gadsdon made her debut at the age of six, starring alongside Antonio Banderas in Genius: Picasso. Her recent CV includes The Hack, One Day, The Midwich Cuckoos and Moonflower Murders – yet this movie has felt like a step up. It’s one of the longest productions she has worked on, and the night shoots for the Land of Spells – on location in Malta – went on until 5am, way past her bedtime. Her mother, Michelle, had read the books to her and her siblings during Covid: “We couldn’t believe it when we saw they were casting for it – and when I got the part, I screamed!”
Garfield and Foy can relate to the allure of a simpler, more nature-centred life. “My dad is the green-thumbed one of the family and sometimes I go and help him with his garden,” says Garfield. “But this has filled me with longing for my own version. I think it’s a longing we all have, to feel more connected to the planet that we’re on. Mainstream modern culture seems designed to help us forget and dislocate us from nature.”
Foy, brought up in commuter-belt Buckinghamshire, may live in London but she has always loved the countryside. She remembers childhood as a time of reading and re-reading books until their spines fell off, and of “very long walks that never ended”. She says: “I think everybody dreams of going off-grid and not investing in the world as it is. I’d be so happy if I could just burn my phone. But then I’d miss everyone. I’d miss WhatsApp …”
The desire for reconnection in a digital modern age is a big theme in the film; Foy has spoken of her “visceral hatred” for social media, as well as the “logistical shitshow” of modern parenting. “Parenthood is very, very different now,” she says now, “and the film reflects that. Children are growing up in a world that we don’t necessarily recognise because it’s not the same as when we were younger. It’s the constant navigation: how do you negotiate those things that are necessary to be in the world, when you also see the damage it does?”
As a mum, she is well aware that your child is never going to be that young again – and that’s why, she thinks, the Blyton books, and this film, trigger such nostalgia. “Growing up, there’s that point where the magic turns off, I suppose, where you stop believing and you start to know how the world works. And it’s about trying to elongate that experience for as long as humanly possible.”
Does Foy still have a favourite tree? Yes, she says – the Hollow Beech on Hampstead Heath. “Even though the inside is hollow it’s still full of leaves, still growing, which is really beautiful.” Gadsdon’s is in the field opposite her house. “Someone made a rope swing one day, and they did it so well that it’s still up there.” A reminder for all of us, that there’s still plenty of magic to be found in trees.
• The Magic Faraway Tree is in UK cinemas from 27 March and Australian cinemas from 26 March
