Kenneth Branagh's take on Disney's new live action movie Cinderella has just hit theatres this week, and the director is really pleased with his version of the classic fairy tale.
And while his adaptation stayed pretty true to the original, Branagh made his Cinderella a bit more different. "You sense that there is an ownership of this tale, it was so personal for so many people, so I was interested in trying to work out why that was," Branagh told Screen Rant.
The director believed that people wanted Cinderella to have an old fashioned feel so he decided not to set it in the 21st century. The one thing he made sure though, was that the lead character be a stronger, more impressive figure.
He shared that there was "an absolute removal of the passivity of Cinderella and finding an amusing way, a light-hearted but significant way of making her proactive and not a girl whose life is about waiting for a bloke."
Branagh is really happy that they got huge stars such as Cate Blanchett (evil stepmother) and Helena Bonham Carter (fairy godmother) to play in the film.
"It was important for those two to be in it because they're kind of like the two pillars of the film and one of the things I noted about Cate Blanchett was her very positive lack of concern for how she turns out in is it," he said.
"She is happy to be a villainess and very pleased to be encouraged as I did with her to reveal this backstory and feel as though this was very human, that this broken heart of hers, if you might regard it that way, would be visible, but she never played for sympathy and I really admired that about her, so she's just there, she just is and uncompromisingly," he added.
The evil stepmother's final scene, when Cinderella tells her "I forgive you" was the hardest thing Blanchett was tasked to do, according to the director. "That's the biggest attack on the stepmother's power," he explained.
Branagh also revealed that Blanchett was one of the reasons why he wanted to direct Cinderella. As for Carter, the director found her completely hilarious.
"Helly (Carter) and I sat down to talk about it and she said, 'I really want to do it but only one thing I insist on and that's wings.' She had to have wings and (costume designer) Sandy Powell didn't want wings to begin with but had to be talked around, but that was fun," he said.
