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It’s been a few months since filming wrapped on the buoyant family film The Magic Faraway Tree, and its two stars have the slight air of having spent time in some kind of wonderful spa. “It was nice,” says Claire Foy, serenely. “I felt quite relieved to be playing a version of a mother that didn’t have to come with a whole side of trauma and grief.” Andrew Garfield nods. “I think joy was the priority,” he says. “It felt very, very different to whatever hell I usually experience as the character I’m playing.”
It’s true enough: Foy and Garfield – cast in Faraway Tree as a pair of benevolent parents who move their family to a ramshackle countryside fixer-upper – have been through the mill lately. Foy comes to this off the back of films like H is for Hawk (a heart-rending drama about grief), All of Us Strangers (another heart-rending drama about grief), and Women Talking (a biting drama about sexual assault). Garfield, meanwhile, has recently been seen playing a predatory college professor in the spiky After the Hunt, and the husband of a woman with cancer in the superlative weepie We Live in Time. Even in the all-action Spider-Man: No Way Home, his remorse-addled superhero was doing a hell of a lot of crying.
Faraway Tree, then, was a welcome sojourn in more frivolous surroundings. Adapted and updated from the classic children’s novel by Enid Blyton, the film follows the Thompson family: Polly (Foy), Tim (Garfield) and their three kids (Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Billie Gadsdon and Phoenix Laroche). Exploring the local woods, the children come across a transportive tree that’s home to magical eccentrics, among them the elfen Silky, played by Nicola Coughlan, and the blustery Moonface, played by Nonso Anozie.
Written by Paddington 2’s Simon Farnaby, it is a gentle film, filled with colour and charm. What tears it does shed are mostly happy ones. “It’s a warm hug in a warm bath… consensually,” laughs Garfield. “Spiritually.”
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Friends reunited: Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield in ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ (Entertainment Film)
Garfield and Foy are speaking to me on a three-way video call, sat on their respective sofas. They are in breezy spirits, cracking jokes and riffing off one another’s answers. It’s an ease that comes from a long, settled familiarity: the pair first worked together a decade ago, on Breathe, a biopic about disability activist Robin Cavendish. (At the time, Garfield was fresh off an Oscar nomination for the war drama Hacksaw Ridge, while Foy was halfway through her reign on The Crown as a young Queen Elizabeth.) “We had such a special, important time on Breathe together that reuniting felt really right,” says Garfield. “There’s a level of trust and care there, I think.”
They’re breezy, too, in Faraway Tree – Garfield in full-bore goofball-dad mode, Foy still good-humoured but with a teflon competence. “Comedy is not something that comes naturally to me,” she admits. “I can be silly, and take the piss out of myself, but I’m not very good at delivering a punchline. I don’t have any pretensions of thinking I’m good at it. I mean, I felt I was quite straight in the film.”
Garfield rushes to correct her: “Oh, you’re very funny in it.” She definitely had her moments, I agree. Foy smirks. “Are they intentional, though, we ask ourselves…”
Country living: there’s a ‘purity and a sweetness in the essence’ of Blyton’s writing, says Garfield (Entertainment Film Distributors)
At least Garfield has more practice when it comes to comedy: he was funny, in a schlubby, dank-smelling sort of way, in the mischievous neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, and has twice hosted Saturday Night Live. But Faraway Tree was its own new frontier. “It’s the good fortune of ageing,” he says, “and being here longer on this planet, and weaving through opportunities of work, and not-work… You realise what you do on set is much less important than what you previously imagined it to be. Not in a kind of negative way, and actually in a very liberating way – where you go, ‘I’m gonna try this, and I’m gonna try that, and we’ll maybe do another take, and maybe we won’t.’”
Both actors seem to light up when they speak of their child co-stars. “They’re the least precocious children you could ever meet,” says Foy. “So grounded. It’s like being around animals: the baggage isn’t there in the same way. They were professionals, but they were also children.” Garfield looks genuinely perturbed as he considers the prospect of reuniting with the kids at the premiere. “I’m terrified of anyone’s voice having dropped,” he says. “I mean, they’re just going to be really tall. I don’t want it. I don’t want any facial hair on that boy’s face.”
Shooting Faraway Tree made Foy, 41, reflect on her own child – the daughter she shares with her ex-husband, the actor Stephen Campbell Moore. Her parenting, she says, involves a “much more shouty” approach than that of her onscreen counterpart. For Garfield, 42, it was a prompt to ruminate on his own childhood. Born in California, the future Spider-Man grew up in (friendly neighbourhood) suburban Surrey. He has no children – yet. “I’m just in awe of the process,” he says. “And Claire’s an incredibly good mother. But it’s definitely all part of my education, and I’m sure that will go out the window as soon as I’m lucky enough to do it myself. I’ll be the most shouty of all the shouting people.”
Foy jumps in: “Shouting’s really great and good. It gets a bad rap, but really, it’s great.” “You got your headline,” drawls Garfield.
Garfield and Foy on set: it’s hard to disagree that the film is hitting all the right notes (Entertainment Film Distributors)
It’s not quite an elephant in the room – or even an elephant lurking, muted, on a fourth Zoom screen – but sooner or later, we have to talk about Enid Blyton. Even during her lifetime, Blyton’s books were criticised for their racism, classism, and sexism, problems that make modern adaptations something of a fraught proposition (though that hasn’t stopped people from trying). Farnaby’s script takes a knowing, dismissive approach to Blyton’s bigotry, acknowledging it and, in places, revising it.
At one point, Bennett-Cardy’s sullen teen remarks to Silky that feminism clearly hasn’t made it to the Faraway Tree. “I think it’s responsible, what Simon and the creative team have done,” says Garfield. “I mean, the other option is to stay true to outdated ideas.
“I’m going to speak for Enid Blyton now,” he chuckles. “I’m sure if Enid Blyton was alive now, her great-great-grandchildren would say to her, ‘Well, this has changed, and there’s more awakedness to this not being very kind, and this being exclusionary, and this being othering, and this being not acceptable to treat other human beings in this way. And I would hope that she would be, like, ‘Yeah. Fair enough.’”
I think that there’s an integrity and a community that is forged in the UK, which is really, really, really special
Claire Foy
There is, he adds, a “purity and a sweetness in the essence” of Blyton’s writing, despite its objectionable flaws. “And I think what Simon’s done, very elegantly, is really focus on growing and watering that essence.”
“It’s more of a question for Simon Farnaby, to be honest,” says Foy. “But, you know, as actors, me and Andrew have the responsibility of choosing to be part of things that we think have integrity and a moral compass. And sometimes, you’re going to get that wrong. But I certainly think that The Magic Faraway Tree’s heart is in the right place.”
It’s hard to disagree that the film is hitting all the right notes. And its paean to the virtues of technology-free atavism feels particularly timely. “I do think it’s a bit of a mission statement,” says Garfield, “for a more nature-based future. I feel like more parents and young people are waking up to think, ‘Oh, something’s really off here. I need to go and sit under a tree for a bit.’ I think that instinct is very alive in most people, whether conscious or not. It just takes a little more work now, because we’ve been captured.” He starts laughing at his own phrasing. “Captured and imprisoned! Our attention has been hijacked and held to ransom.”
Watching Garfield and Foy interact with each other, as two inimitably British actors who both broke into Hollywood at a similar time, there is a real sense of kinship – that these are peers in the richest sense of the word. “I’m very proud to be part of the community of actors and creators in the UK,” says Foy. “I think that there’s an integrity and a community that is forged here, which is really, really, really special.
Garfield as Robin Cavendish with Foy as his wife Diana in ‘Breathe’ (2017) (Embankment Films)
“I think people think of ‘Hollywood’, in inverted commas, as a place,” she continues. “And if you’re making films, you’re just in a series of different places with a series of different people. And hopefully, throughout mine and Andrew’s careers, we’re going to keep interweaving, and spending time with each other.”
Acting, she says, is a rare profession in which people’s worlds can collide repeatedly, sometimes over the course of a lifetime. “You know those groups of actors you hear of, like the Dames, who are in and out of each other’s lives for years in a professional capacity? There’s a love there, and a feeling of growth, watching someone go through life – not just as an actor, but also as a human being. And it’s a very unique experience, I think, to have that within work.”
Foy smiles again. Garfield smiles again. Maybe the next time their paths cross, it’ll be back in more lachrymose circumstances – I reckon they’d be a good fit for a modern, even sadder reboot of Marley and Me. But for now, the grass is green. The sun is out. And these two actors are basking in it.
‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ is in cinemas from 27 March