Mary PoPPins returns
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The new family
Meet the characters of Mary
Poppins Returns...
mary PoPPins
(Emily Blunt)
The practically perfect nanny flies back into
the lives of the Banks children.
Jack
(Lin-Manuel Miranda)
This loveable streetlamp lighter was an
apprentice of Mary Poppins’ friend Bert.
michael Banks
(Ben Whishaw)
Now grown and with three children,
Michael needs help to move on after the
death of his wife.
Jane Banks
(Emily Mortimer)
Michael’s older sister Jane begins to
struggle during the family’s bereavement.
ellen
(Julie Walters)
A loyal maid of the Banks residence, Ellen
is bewitched by Poppins.
william weaTherall wilkins
(Colin Firth)
Wilkins has taken over from Mr Dawes as
the president of the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank.
ToPsy
(Meryl Streep)
Mary Poppins’ eccentric older cousin Topsy
lives in a bizarre world of upside-downs.
mr Dawes Jr
(Dick Van Dyke)
After playing Mr Dawes Sr in the original,
Dick Van Dyke returns as the banker’s son.
honour each other, to do it from a distance.”
The film’s Bert-like character comes in
the form of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Jack,
a streetlamp lighter Miranda likes to call
‘Puerto Rican Dick Van Dyke 2.0’. “He
apprenticed to Bert, so I like to picture a little
me, toddling around behind Bert as he had
his 50 jobs,” Miranda tells us. “So Jack is the
one adult who never loses the magic of Mary
Poppins. He knows everything she represents
when she comes back into town and there is
a sort of a thing. Grown-ups forget about the
magic of childhood and Jack is just one of
those guys who just doesn’t forget and that’s
fun to play.”
With Jack, Miranda is attempting to
emulate Dick Van Dyke’s loveable chimney
sweep. But one thing he’s keen to leave
in 1964 is Van Dyke’s famously dodgy
cockney accent. "I have been working on it
for months and you will have to wait until
Christmas to hear it,” Miranda tells us of hisown take on the accent. “I would say it’s just
shy of Cockney, I would say it’s East End but
not Cockney and it’s more Anthony Newley
than Stanley Holloway, if that makes any
sense. And really I have an amazing dialect
coach named Sandra Butterworth who I have
been working with for hours per day. And
then I also wanted to manage expectations.
So I will tell you now it’s the worst accent
you ever heard! I have been listening to a lot
of music and that’s my way into anything, so
I have been listening to a lot of Billy Bragg
and Anthony Newley, and so that’s been the
fun for me. The hardest part are the Os.”
For Miranda, who, like many of us, grew
up with original film, saying playing Jack
in Mary Poppins Returns was a dream come
true is a bit of an understatement. “It would
be audacious for me to have dreams like this,
because this is beyond dreams,” Miranda
says. “Who dreamed there was going to be a
sequel to Mary Poppins? And much less thatMary comes to bring joy
back to the family.