Behind the Scenes of Cinderella with Director Kenneth Branagh #CinderellaEvent

I was invited on an expenses paid trip to LA by Disney to cover the #CinderellaEvent in exchange for my posts of the trip experiences. All opinions are my own.

I always love learning about movies from the directors. I enjoy the insight they can give into the behind the scenes elements of the film. I am a big fan of Director Kenneth Branagh and I was looking forward to meeting him and hearing about Cinderella.

He was very nice to us all as we chatted about the film.

Tell us about the casting process.

Kenneth: I had an idea of how Cinderella should be. But we knew in my experience, it was gonna be like when I made a film, Thor, which took a long time to find the beautiful and sexy Chris Hemsworth. Now officially the sexiest man in the world. I thought, well, I have good taste then clearly (he said jokingly). No, no.

You had to really feel that the character, the actor, you just want to be with them. You know, you want to be in their company. She had to be likeable. You needed to want to spend those 90 minutes or whatever with her. And because of the way we were slightly re-imagining the character’s personality, that she needed to have a good sense of humor. What we were calling a kind of an approachable beauty and kindness. Passion and strength and that could stand up in a scene with Miss Blanchett or Miss Bonham-Carter.

Who also just had a sort of simplicity without being sappy. It had to check a lot of boxes. So it was gonna take a long time. I heard Lily James’ voice first. I thought, “God, that’s a beautiful voice”. Then she was a beautiful girl. Then she was very patient across a lot of auditions and things. And eventually it just became clear that she was the one.

What was the most difficult scene to direct?

Kenneth: I think probably the ballroom sequence because I knew that there would be so much expectation on it. And I knew that practically speaking we were gonna have 500 people, half of whom were gonna be in corsets. That was gonna be a bit tricky. I knew that the dancing and then the sort of staging and the sense of our opulent it was and getting a sense of the glamour and the flamboyance of it was important.

I wanted to take people to the ball. But I also knew that for me the scene was just as much about his hand on the small of her back in the beginning of that dance. So it was trying to keep that big large-scale ambitions with just wanting the human dynamic of the boy meets girl moment.

What brought you to this project?

Kenneth: I think it was the surprise of being asked. I hadn’t long ago done Thor. And I did a film called Jack Ryan. And so a couple of quite boy-sy films. Being asked to do a girl’s film, if that’s not a stupid way of putting it. A fairytale and such a famous one, I remembered a of couple things from Cinderella. I loved the chase back from the palace at midnight. I really remember in the original animated film the stepmother coming out of the dark with two blazing green eyes, at which she’s lying in bed. Cinderella brings her some tea. So I remember it being a bit scary but very exciting and fun.

I was very aware also if you do a Disney film then you have a big responsibility. There’s gonna be a lot of kids seeing it for the first time. They all know the story as well. I’ve never made a film where the lights go down and you realize that everybody from five to 95 knows what’s gonna happen next. So it’s not about what happens next. It’s about how you do what happens next. So that was very exciting.

Were there sound bites from the original animation?

Kenneth: No. You know what we did? We scripted the entire mice story through the movie. So Chris Weitz and I sat down, and we wrote words, dialogue for all four of the mice in every scene in which they appeared. And then we recorded them with actors a couple of different ways. Sometimes we made the actors say it very, very, very slowly so that when we then sped it up to be in sort of mice squeak mode, you could just get a half a hint of what they are saying. So for instance Gus Gus at the end when he finally is persuaded that he shouldn’t eat the cheese and maybe he should jump on the back of the other three so they can open the window and they can hear Cinderella singing. He says something. There were a few little throw away modern remarks like that. There is a secret mouse play and screenplay inside the movie.

How did you chose the locations to film?

Kenneth: We almost always have a location manager to whom you give a brief. Uh, and then they go off and help out. But as being a small country, frankly, you end up knowing a few. And how I’ve done a few pictures with palaces in, I have my contacts as it were. But essentially of course we built so much of it that we didn’t do too much inside real palaces. So the whole of that ballroom is an entire construction on the 007 stage in Pinewood. But the outside of Cinderella’s house was all built for real in a place called Black Park.

Then interestingly the forest where the prince and Cinderella meet is in Windsor Great Park. Which is essentially the Queen’s back garden. She lives in Windsor Castle part of the time, so part of that park involves that group of oak trees which are over 600 years old. So it was very nice to be able to say to Lily and Richard you’re gonna do this magical scene in a magical place. Because these oak trees were here when Shakespeare was alive. So that was really very magical. We were around that area the southeast part of the England around Windsor Castle. It was basically there and around there are some wonderful forests and beautiful spots to shoot.

The movie was amazing. It has an innocence.

Kenneth: I think so. It’d be interesting now if you go back and look at the 1950 animated picture ’cause you may be surprised at how far we depart in a strange way. I think we absolutely embrace the spirit of it. And in a couple of occasions we really sort of hint at a couple of shots. But I think the real reinvention is the character of Cinderella and her kind of pro-activeness. You know, she doesn’t just wait around but also this non-cynical belief in the power of kindness and courage. One of the things we really wanted to do was just make sure that was not something that the kids were being sort of lectured with. It was done lightly enough from a character who seemed to embody it in a way that still allowed her to be happy and free and intelligent and smart. I mean not suddenly be all self-righteous and pious and everything. So I think that was something we tried very hard to do. And the hardest, hardest, hardest decision in the whole movie was, I know it’s a bit of a Disney cliché ’cause they’ve been doing it since Bambi, was losing parents.

As you will have spotted, we’ve got three out of four of the parents (passed away). I feel responsible for a kind of attack on the grown ups. It’s tough. But it’s beautiful. In the first ten minutes where Mum goes, my God, you see the shoulders heave. If you sit at the back of the auditorium and you see a lot of arms go around small people, either reach up or vice versa. And by the time the son loses dad the three-quarters of the way through the movie. We didn’t want to traumatize young people. But at the same time as I was mentioning earlier, you know, this sort of responsibility you have if you get the privilege of making a Disney movie is there is a way to maybe just find a compassionate way to talk about things that includes some of the difficult things that life throws up. As long as it can be done lightly and there’s lots of entertainment and everything else.

Photo credit: Jana at MerlotMommy.com

What was your favorite iconic image?

Kenneth: Well, all of those. I felt very secure in the world of Sandy Powell and her amazing talent with the costumes. And the determination to be very inventive about all of those things. So the kind of balance between finding this sort of classical approach. For instance, it sounds like a sort of simplistic question, but there was a big question about what color is that dress? You know, does it stay blue? The original was blue. What kind of blue? Is it pink? Because the mother’s dress is pink. But should it stay pink in order to honor her mother? How much do we want to see a pink dress for that amount of time in the ballroom sequence? And what can we do with material? How magical can we make the material that is pink as opposed to blue or some other color? So those conversations were all had.

It just becomes a stage-by-stage kind of process. And you felt quite a pressure with the slippers because you’ve got ruby slippers, and you have other slippers in film history. It was going to be a big moment. Sandy’s work with Swarovski, to find this kind of multi-faceted thing, which also has a heaviness. It was incredibly heavy, the real thing. I think was a stroke of genius. When we saw it for the first time it was very– It was very gasp inducing when we saw the actual object

Cinderella at the top of the stairs coming into the ball was a favorite moment of mine. Or actually even just walking from the coach up the steps and into the palace I think the sort of moment where she comes into her own.

What brought you to cast Richard Madden as the Prince?

Kenneth: Apart from very blue eyes and very tight trousers (We all laughed). He had intelligence and wit. Also he relished the idea of how you might sort of play a gentleman. He wasn’t striving hard to be a certain modern kind of cool. I think both these actors, I love the idea that they were prepared to be uncynical in the film and just sort of respond directly to each other and that a gallantry, a courtship,the desire to woo, to serve, to listen were things that he felt could be played very positively. I think it’s very touching and wonderful chemistry between them. He was somebody I felt could do this thing we needed to do of having a man who earned Cinderella’s respect and love. Didn’t just get it because he had a big car.