Emma Thompson creates backstory for her villain in Netflix’s film adaptation of Matilda The Musical

LOS ANGELES – Out of all of Roald Dahl’s children’s stories, one of the darkest might be his 1988 novel Matilda, about an unusually gifted young girl who happens to have the world’s worst parents.

But just as memorable as the precocious eponymous protagonist is the villain of the piece, Miss Trunchbull, the terrifying headmistress who makes the girl’s life hell.

In Matilda The Musical – the award-winning stage show inspired by Dahl’s book that launched in London’s West End in 2011 – the fearsome Miss Trunchbull is played by male actors for comical effect.

But with make-up and prosthetics, an actress – Oscar winner Emma Thompson – will now bring the character to life for the first time in a new Netflix film adaptation, Matilda The Musical, premiering on the platform on Dec 25.

Thompson and co-star Alisha Weir, the 13-year-old Irish actress who plays Matilda, jumped on a Zoom call to chat with The Straits Times about the film, which features music and lyrics by Australian comedian Tim Minchin, the composer of the West End show.

To ground the character of Miss Trunchbull, Thompson, 63, borrowed from a historical figure and created a complete psychological backstory to explain the character’s aggressive, child-hating behaviour.

“Matthew Warchus, our director, wanted us to be really real.

“And Trunchbull is such a monster, but it’s quite a difficult thing to create, a monster who’s really real,” says the British actress, who won a Best Actress Oscar for Howards End (1992) and a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Sense And Sensibility (1995).

“So I cast about and found the history of a great (British) poet, Edith Sitwell, who was unusually tall and had a crooked nose. When she was young, her aristocratic family used to put her into these terrible full body braces to try and straighten out her spine. And I thought: That’s a form of torture, actually.

“If you weren’t lucky enough to get past it through creativity, you might have turned into someone like Trunchbull.”

She adds: “Trunchbull is someone terrified of her own frailty – that’s why she hates children so much, because she can’t bear the fact that she was so helpless as a child.

“Thank you, Freud, Jung and every other psychoanalyst ever.”

“Then you add the costume to that idea, and the make-up, and Bob’s your uncle,” says Thompson, who wears a prosthetic chin piece and a costume reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Third Reich.

The celebrated thespian – who this year earned glowing notices playing a woman who hires a young sex worker in the comedy-drama Good Luck To You, Leo Grande – also felt it was an honour to play this role.

“It was such a privilege to be asked, because in the musical in the theatre, she has always been played by a man.

“And it’s different with a man playing it,” says Thompson, who is married to her Sense And Sensibility co-star, British actor Greg Wise. They have a daughter, 22, and an adopted Rwandan son, 34.

“There was a wonderful British actor called Bertie Carvel playing Miss Trunchbull in the version I saw, and I wrote him a fan letter, he was so great. So actually I was quite scared to follow in his footsteps.”

The star also appreciated how “truthful as an author” Dahl was, she says.

The late British writer is “one of the greatest authors for children there has ever been”, in part because he never sugarcoated any thing.

“And he made it clear there were dangers in the world and also really unpleasant people who couldn’t necessarily be redeemed,” she says.

The character of Matilda also gives one hope, she adds.

“She rescues (her teacher) Miss Honey, and it reminds you that even though we might be different ages, it doesn’t mean we are different from each other in any other way.”

And this story is, in many ways, ageless, Thompson says.

“My dad used to write for children, and he always used to say that he didn’t believe in ‘children’ – he just thought they were people who hadn’t lived quite as long.

“And I sort of feel the same way.”

Matilda The Musical premieres on Netflix on Dec 25.