The Magic Faraway Tree movie: Jessica Gunning on Dame Washalot and Baby Reindeer success

Have you ever tried to do laundry the old-fashioned way? By hand?

Jessica Gunning has, and after hours and hours of stirring that stick through the bucket of water and washing, she was starting to get some serious arm muscles.

Laundry is an occupational hazard when you’re playing Dame Washalot, one of the characters from Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, now re-imagined for a modern audience in a film that also stars Claire Foy, Andrew Garfield, Nicola Coughlan and Jennifer Saunders.

Gunning hadn’t read The Magic Faraway Tree when she was a child. She was more of a Secret Seven and Famous Five, she told The Nightly.

“Then a lot of the kids in my life started to read The Magic Faraway Tree so I came to it as an adult. It’s such a surreal world to be thrown into, but a kid’s dream as well,” she said.

The modernised story, written by Simon Farnaby who also co-scribed Paddington 2, follows three siblings who is moved to the countryside by their parents Polly (Foy) and Tim (Garfield), after the adults decide they were becoming disconnected as a family.

Tim had lived nearby when he was a kid and has a dream of subsisting on the land and growing tomatoes for a homemade sauce business.

The younger siblings Fran (Billie Gadson) and Joe (Phoenix Larouche) adjust quickly enough, aside from some video gaming withdrawals, but oldest sister Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy) is not having it, resisting the changes at every turn.

Things shift when the kids discover the faraway tree, a magical place with fairies, pixies and characters with names such as Moonface (Nonso Anozie), Silky (Coughlan), Mr Watzisname (Oliver Chris) and the Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns).

Dame Washalot is like a nexus point, overseeing a ladder from the tree which climbs up to different rotating worlds, including one when it’s always your birthday, but you better watch out with those wishes.

Dame Washalot is a gregarious, warm and generous character, and for Gunning, she landed the role the same week Baby Reindeer premiered, in which she plays the menacing stalker Martha.

“It was a bit of a breath of fresh air,” she said. “It was such a contrast obviously, and a nice world to escape into.”

Gunning has been working consistently for almost two decades but Baby Reindeer was such an attention grabbing series, and her performance even more so, that what followed included a raft of accolades including an Emmy, a BAFTA, a Critics Choice, a SAG and more.

But at its core, her life hasn’t changed that much. “But in terms of the opportunities I’ve had since, it’s been amazing,” Gunning said. “Obviously working on this movie with some of my favourite people like Jennifer Saunders.

“But I’ve also had the chance to work with Steven Soderbergh and Ian McKellan, and I’ve just finished a movie with Angelina Jolie,” she continued, referencing upcoming roles in films The Christophers and Anxious People, respectively.

“You just think, ‘What the heck is life!’. So it feels very surreal, but I’m very, very grateful. Obviously I feel very lucky.”

Even when she was doing all that laundry during the scenes because where it could, the production prioritised practical sets and effects.

Apart from the Angry Pixie, everyone in her scenes were there with her on stage, all those actors and larger-than-life characters bouncing off each other, standing on a real fake tree platform, decorated with real fake objects.

Gunning really wore that multi-layered costume with the washboard hanging off the front and the elaborate rubber gloves, even in the summer heat, which is when they were filming. It took half an hour to get everything on.

The practicality of it comes across in the irresistible joy of the managed chaos and the spirited energy of her scenes.

“It was so fun and it felt quite theatrical in a way because when I got the part, I didn’t know whether it would all be green screen or whether we’d have costumes, or acting to tennis balls.

“Actually, we’re all physically there, fully dressed, and just playing and improvising, and it was a really collaborative feel. The way they cast the movie, they got actors that are used to improvising comedy and things like that. So, it all felt really free and fun.”

Unlike anything to do with Baby Reindeer, her four-year-old nephew was able to go along to a family and friends screening of The Magic Faraway Tree to see his aunt on the big screen.

“He loved it,” she recalled. “His favourite character was the Angry Pixie, but he loved it and followed it along, and it was great to be in a cinema, hearing everyone laughing.”

Given how beloved Blyton’s books are, and that you have generations and generations of people who grew up on them with a clear conception in their imaginations of The Magic Faraway Tree characters look and sound like, there is, of course, a little bit of pressure.

“Luckily, it’s been embraced in terms of everyone who’s watched it. Nobody has been disappointed, thank goodness!

“We’re in safe hands with someone like Simon, what he did with the Paddington movies was amazing, it felt like he preserved the core of them, but then made them their own thing as well.

“With any book that’s been adapted, who you had in your head never changes, really. The book is still special to each individual person, but hopefully this (film) means that more and more audiences will become aware of it, and a younger audience too that have never heard of the books might go back and read them, or just this move as their platform into this world.”

The Magic Faraway Tree is in cinemas