Exclusive Interview With Kenneth Branagh (Director) #CinderellaEvent

Disclosure – I received an invite to the #CinderellaEvent. All expenses were paid for and covered by Disney. The opinions stated herein are 100% my own.

During my trip to Hollywood, not only did I have the chance to interview Lily James who plays Cinderella and Cate Blanchett who plays Lady Tremaine, we also had the opportunity to interview the Director of Cinderella, Kenneth Branagh. It was a pretty amazing morning and I can’t say that I enjoyed anyone’s interview over the other.

Not only did we get to interview these three stars, I also happened to see them looking their best at the Cinderella World Premiere too!

During our interview with Kenneth Branagh we got to ask some really good questions about the film. Questions about the casting process, difficult scenes and locations, what brought him to this project and more. Below are just a few of the questions that were asked but you can listen to the whole interview below which I suggest since I really adore Kenneth’s Irish accent.

Q: Tell us about the casting process.

Well, I had an idea of how Cinderella should be. But we knew in my experience, it was gonna be like 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. So I thought well, I have good taste then clearly. No, no. So we knew that it would take a while and that you had to really feel that the character, the actor would in this case, you just want to be with them. You know, you want to be in their company.

Yeah, 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, you know, a good sense of humor, a kinda what we were calling a kind of an approachable beauty and kindness and passion and strength and that could stand up, you know, in a scene with Miss Blanchett or Miss Bonham-Carter.

And who also just had a kind of, a sort of simplicity without being, you know, sappy. A lot of it had to tick a lot of boxes. So it was gonna take a long time. And I heard Lily James’ voice first. I thought, God, that’s a beautiful voice. And then she was a beautiful girl. And then she was very patient across a lot of auditions and things. And eventually it just became clear that she was the one.

Q:   What was the most difficult scene to direct?

I think probably the ballroom sequence because you knew that there would be so much expectation on it. And you knew that practically speaking you were gonna have 500 people, half of whom were gonna be in corsets. And that was gonna be a bit tricky. You know, you’ve gonna have 500 people to the loo as well during the course of the day. And then get them back on set before wasting too much time. And 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.

Q: What brought you to cast Richard?

I thought that he had sort of, apart from very blue eyes, he had very tight trousers, but that was another. They actually weren’t his own trousers. So I shouldn’t really. You know, he had intelligence and wit. And also he relished the idea of how you might sort of play a gentleman. You know, he didn’t, he wasn’t striving hard to be a certain modern kind of cool.

You know, I think both these actors, I love the idea that they were prepared to be uncynical in the film, you know, 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 and would be very, very attractive and that in a way there was a natural disposition in the world of the piece that we presented for him to love her.

You know, and that he was able to do that and not see that as suddenly rendering him the love interest. He just, it was a very powerful thing to be somebody listening, looking, and reacting, and trying to, with the screen time that he has, and I think it’s very touching and wonderful chemistry between them. And I think he was somebody I felt could do this thing we needed to do of having a man who earned Cinderella’s respect and love.

Listen to the full interview with Director Kenneth Branagh below:

Part One and Part Two:

After the interview Kenneth was kind enough to take a group picture for us to share.

Want more Kenneth Branagh interviews on Cinderella?

Watch this video on Kenneth Branagh’s Journey from Thor to Cinderella…

CINDERELLA opens in theaters everywhere TOMORROW March 13th!