After spending time with Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Tracey Ullman during their fun interview for Into the Woods, it was super easy to keep the energy up and the laughs aplenty when the Golden Globe nominee for Best Actress for the film, Emily Blunt and the hilarious, quite talented, and the Late Late Show host James Corden during their interviews.
Emily and James entered the room with so much excitement, especially James, instantly announcing as he walked into the room of 25 women bloggers stating in his ever so charming accent, “This is like a dream! This is all I ever dreamt of! Are you all mums?” We all crack up and James asks, “Who’s got the most kids? Who thinks they’ve got the most?”. One mom responds, “Four. And one on the way.” Then James asked while laughing, “Why would you do that? I mean it, at some point, you’ve crossed that with the four, and what point… I said to my wife the other day, she was with our five week old baby” We all oooh and ahhh, and Emily laughs, “You know your crowd!” And James continued, “and we have and a three and a half year old too and I turned to my wife- this was about ten days ago at quarter to four in the morning, and I just went, you know, we’re never doing this again. And she looked so tired, and my daughter’s just sucking here, and my son’s losing his sh!t on the floor, and she’s like out of it and I say, ‘you know we’re never doing this again, right?’ And she went, we’ll see.” Emily reminds him that this is a hard age, though. It’ll get better. James says, “Well, it’s certainly wonderful while I’m here.”
So that is how it began…and the laughs just kept going.
Emily Blunt and James Corden: Into The Woods Interview
So I asked Emily to tell us about shooting the film up to her being 7 months pregnant.
Emily: Well, it’s funny because I took, you know, found out I was having a baby when I found out I had the part, but I was thinking well, she’s the baker’s wife, so it doesn’t matter if I gain a few pounds. And also it’s, you know, it’s the singing, and it’s lovely, and it’s easy- I forgot how much running around this woman does in the woods. Like, I like body slam into Anna Kendrick like a linebacker, and she’s a tiny person. I, like, almost killed her.
And you know, yanking Rapunzel’s hair out- she’s always running; like, we’re always rushing. And so it was, it was interesting. There was a chair onset that was written on it, Emily Bunt’s pregnancy. I often found Chris Pine sitting in it. I’m like, stood over him, several months pregnant, like that. And he went, and he went, “oh, do, do you wanna sit down?”, and I’m like, yes, I do.
James: He’s (Chris Pine) just, “God, I’m tired.” (Acting like the self center prince that Chris plays in the film.)
Was your morning sickness bad?
Emily: I was through the first trimester by the time I came to rehearsal. I honestly was in the second trimester, so I had so much energy, so elated, and then, I wrapped just I went into the, I’m tired, I’m fat stage. Yeah.
With the roles of the Baker and The Baker’s Wife, what did you do to research your roles?
Emily: We made some bread.
James: Yeah, we had a bread making…
Emily: Session.
James: We had these bakers come in- this is what they do on films. They go, well, ‘we should teach you how to bake’. And it’s, like, four hours of, like, and none of it’s in the film. (We all laugh) An absolute waste of everybody’s time, but, I mean, it couldn’t have been more a waste of time and money. But I took my bread home and cooked it, and it was…
Emily: My mom loved it.
James: Oh my god. It was amazing.
Emily: It was good.
James: Phenomenal.
So a lot of the film is about parenting methods and what happens, so did this influence how you guys parent or what not to do at all?
Emily: It’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of that, actually.
James: I think there’s an honesty in the film which has made me want to be more honest with my children, like, from the get-go to- I think that’s the great message in the film of, like, be careful what wish for, and sometimes the very thing you wish for is not the thing that you need in a world where we seem to have told children that this happily ever after does exist, and we all know it doesn’t. And I feel like- that’s not to say you won’t be happy, but like that song, No One is Alone, which at the end of the film, I sort of feel like what that song is saying is, it’s two adults talking to two children saying, there’s some screw-ups coming your way, and that’s true of all of us. There’s screw-ups, and they’re coming for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But when they do, you might feel like you’re completely on your own in the world. You will feel like you are completely alone, and you’re not. And you never will be. And these things are just part of your life and what ultimately make you better and stronger. And it has made me think that that’s a positive message to tell your children, that mistakes are gonna happen.
Emily: And also you said that, you know, children, like, no one has more perception than a child.
James: Yeah.
Emily: They see everything, they’re like little sponges, they pick up- even babies, I’ve noticed, they pick up on your energy, like if someone walks in the house that Hazel (Emily’s daughter) hasn’t met before and they’ve had a bad day she doesn’t want to go to them. She doesn’t want to be around them, you know. And so even from a young age, they’re so perceptive. And, and I just feel that it’s important to teach your children that life is not always going to be easy, you know, and that is what this film is about. Nobody goes through life unscathed. Nobody does. And actually, these fairy tales, the original fairy tales really were sort of, obviously children can’t understand the deep metaphorical meanings in these fairy tales, but they understand right and wrong, and they understand the need to make decisions, and they understand what happens when people behave badly, they get a comeuppance. You know, it’s that sort of thing that these fairy tales, I think, were created to teach children about life- warn them about life. And we’re sort of in a society where we like to coddle our children and over-tend, over-parent, over-this- there’s like ten thousand books on how to raise a kid nowadays, and it, it’s purely instinctual. It’s purely, it’s purely personal, you know, and I mean, I saw this thing that there are books- How to Raise a Gluten-Free Baby. How to Raise..
James: In my defense, when I wrote that…
We all laugh!
James: I sort of feel like the only thing you can be with your children is honest. Like we’ve got quite a bit of change coming up in our house, so like we’re moving, and so for my son, we’re moving country, and he’s just had this is a new person joined our family, and he’s leaving his school and gonna start a new one. And like, any one of those things are huge deals for a child. And so me and my wife saw this child psychologist; we, like Skyped her, we don’t wanna mess this up. And she said the most amazing thing. When she just went, if your son says I don’t wanna leave or, or starts crying, or is scared of it, don’t do the thing which you might- which I think I would’ve done and go, ‘it’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be sunny, we’re gonna have a swimming pool, we’re gonna go to the beach; she, she was like, don’t tell him that what he’s feeling is not valid; and actually go ‘I know. I know, buddy. It sucks, but I promise you we’re all in it together, and I feel sad about it, too, but there might be great things that we get to do, and this is an adventure that we’re all gonna go on together’, and, I was like, oh, so all you really need to do is just be honest and go, you’re not a child. You’re just a person. You are a person.
Emily: Yeah, they just wanna be heard.
You guys have such great chemistry together. Onscreen and off screen. What’s the history there?
Emily: That’s part of working with each other. We knew each other, actually, I’ve known James for, like, eight/nine years almost? Um, we met at a polo match in England. The princes were there, guys-
James: Harry and William.
Emily: Harry and William. We met them…
James: It couldn’t get more British…
Emily: Yeah. And we were at a polo match.
James: We met there…
Emily: And we really got along and, and we had too much to drink, and we sang…Something Stupid by Frank Sinatra, and that’s not true. Like, he’s the only person I’ve ever sung in front of…
James: Yeah, we were getting on great.
Emily: And so it was nice when I heard it was him- I remember Rob Marshall telling me that I had the part and I said, who’s the baker. And he went, it’s James Corden. And I went, OH MY GOD! I was so relieved and so thrilled because I knew that this couple needed to have real lifelong, shorthand chemistry, ease with each other and, you needed to believe in them. You needed to believe that they’ve been together forever. They were probably the only option they had in the village that they grew up in. These are small-town folk.
James: There’s always options. Okay? There’s never not options if you’re rocking this. (Totally talking about himself poking fun that he isn’t quite a typical dreamboat, like the prince.)
Emily: This is the thing that he’s going on, that he said the whole time, this is a fairytale movie. A lot of, like, fantasy stuff happens, and the audience goes with it. The only thing that this audience won’t understand is why she’d leave this (pointing to James) – for Chris Pine.
Ok, we are hysterically laughing at them.
James: No one, no one would believe that, you know what I mean?
Emily: He said to Rob, he was like, they’re not gonna go with you on this, Rob.
James: People will be just like, oh, come on. No woman on earth leaves Brad Pitt for, you know… I’m trying to think of someone without being offensive.
So funny!
You both had a lot of scenes in the film with the kids, Daniel Huttlestone plays Jack and Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood, what was it like working with them?
James: Well, they’re both incredibly talented and gifted, and unbelievably, composed and assured, because it’s one thing being brilliant in the film; it’s another thing just being brilliant to be around all day, and they are.
Emily: I mean, Lilla Crawford was doing eight shows a week playing Annie on Broadway. Like, this is a girl who knows how to punch in and go to work, and show up, and be professional, and when she opens her mouth, she has a voice like a trumpet. I mean, it was just insane what she was able to do, and she was so capable, you know. And Daniel was completely unflappable, like, the coolest kid.
James: Well, the first day of shooting was the Giants in the Sky song, and which is my favorite song in the show anyway, and I absolutely remember watching him run around this tree looking at him and I remember looking and thinking, oh my god, I’m watching a thousand Facebook profiles start to happen from girls who are just gonna be in love with you. He’s got that thing which is unquantifiable that you don’t know what it is, but it’s just there. And he’s so gifted, musically. He would sit down at a piano, and he’ll playing these ukulele- he’s the real deal. He really, really is.
We were discussing today is that you are such a discovery for all of us, and we’re just really pleased about your character and just kinda fell in love with you. So you’re kinda gonna emerge as this undiscovered, like, leading man- you’re gonna be huge. So you’re starting the Late Late Show. What if you’re gonna start to get all these movie offers to be, like, the hunk in Hollywood?
James just laughs.
Emily: Wow.
James: Let’s, let’s not get carried away. It’s an amazing sort of time for me. I’m very intent on trying to enjoy it while it’s here, whatever it is, whatever comes or doesn’t. Like, I’m so aware that these are transient things that will go as quickly as they arrive, in so many ways. And so I just want to really enjoy it and, and lots of people have said to me, and I get it, but when I decided to take on the, The Late Late Show, lots of people’s first reaction- and my reaction, in a, in a sense, when I first got offered it, it was an amount of reticence of people saying, well, you won’t be able to do this, and you, there’s a film coming and what if, you know? But after talking it through with my wife, the, the truth is that in this, in this job, there are no guarantees of anything, and you really have to go wherever the work is. And there was a point in the summer, just after I got offered, and I was unsure what to do, where I was shooting in Johannesburg for, like, six weeks, Skyping my son on my birthday. And I thought, this is only gonna get harder. And actually, here is someone offering me a job where I get to be creative every day, I get to have fun every day and talk to America before or more likely while they’re falling asleep and, and at the end of every day, I get to go home and be a present father and husband. And I just don’t think there’s ever a child when they’re twenty or thirty, sitting in a therapist’s chair going, do you know, my dad was just around too much. He gave me too many cuddles, and he was too much a part of my life. And ultimately, it was like, well, this is a privilege, actually, to be in this job, in this industry, because you don’t have the choice. You’ve gotta go (travel). Oh, there’s a tax break in Vancouver. I’ll be back in three months. And actually, I feel very lucky to have such an opportunity.
Emily: You’re gonna make me cry.
James: Stop it. Stop it, flirt.
The interview ended with them both wishing they had more time. It was a fun 20 minutes!
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INTO THE WOODS is rated PG and opens in theaters everywhere on December 25th!
*I was invited to take part in this Disney Into The Woods and ABC Family sponsored event. As always, all opinions are my own.
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