When I attended the Mary Poppins Returns red carpet movie premiere event in LA , I also interviewed the cast, including Emily Blunt(Mary), Min-Manueal Miranda (Jack), Ben Whishaw (Michael Banks) & Emily Mortimer (Jane Banks), Director Rob Marshall, and the adorable children Pixie Davies (“Anabel Banks”) & Joel Dawson (“Georgie Banks”)   and now the music geniuses Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman !

MARY POPPINS RETURNS OPENS IN THEATERS TODAY DECEMBER 19TH 

Music is one of the major components of any movie. It draws out our feelings and can make us cry or get up and dance and so much more!

With a Grammy and Tony under his belt, Marc Shaiman was the perfect choice to tackle Mary Poppins Returns with his musical writing partner Scott Wittman. These two together created, in my opinion, classics that will go down in history!

Here is our exclusive interview:

What was it like to work with Richard Sherman (the original composer of Mary Poppins)?

Marc Shaiman: I became four years old. I mean, there he was in front of me and I got to ask him, why’d you write this song and why was it in this key, and what was that chord, and the choices of words, and what was Walt Disney like?  I don’t remember his answers.

A coincidence?

Scott Wittman: It was interesting, with Richard Sherman, because in the first movie, they had musicalized a sequence that got cut. We tried to musicalize the same sequence and it got cut.

Have you stayed true to the original, in terms of music?

Scott Wittman: Well, I think that we went back to the books. And there were so many more adventures in all the stories. And some of them just cried out to be sung. And so we wanted – I think – and Lin said it great. He said, “You know what’s great about it, is our movie rhymes with the first movie.” And that’s a huge compliment, too. But all the material was in the books. And then we had Emily and Lin and we had them right from the beginning.

But we knew we had it right so it sounded like it was in the same neighborhood of the first movie. And also the first movie was like our teacher. It was as our parents.

So you grow up with that, there’s gonna be something about what we wrote, that would come from that. And would sound similar and you can’t try to copy. Or even write something that’s so close, that it will only make us pale in comparison. And yet we couldn’t help but find ourselves in the Mary Poppins vernacular. Musically and lyrically.

And obviously, Emily’s take on it is so singular to her. So that also freed us up, she just came in with such confidence. And wit. And so it was easy to kind of fit these pieces on.

Marc Shaiman: Cause when we first sit down to write we had four months of working with Rob and his partner John and the screenwriter, David Magee. Where we really start from the beginning of the movie. They had the idea that it would be about Michael Banks, a recent widower. And that would be the crux of what’s going on.

And then we just pieced the movie scene by scene. And figuring out where to put a song. And how it would speak to what was going on. Or further what was going on.

Scott Wittman: Even before we wrote a word, –

Marc Shaiman: And so that was fantastic. ‘Cause you only have to talk about it. But then we did that like in autumn, through Christmas. And then after New Year’s, was time for us to go in the room. And we just sat, usually for days and just sing,

Scott Wittman: It was interesting, with Richard Sherman, because in the first movie, they had musicalized a sequence that got cut. And we tried to musicalize the same sequence. And it got cut.

Marc Shaiman: It was about, when Mary Poppins’ birthday falls on a full moon, the animals in the zoo become the spectators and the humans are in the cages. So we wrote a song called, The Anthropomorphic Zoo,  And the Sherman brothers wrote a song called The Chimpanzoo.

 

Marc Shaiman: Both got cut. So we could do a nice medley

Both Marc and Scott sand to us and it was so awesome. I could imagine woking with them would be filled with song all day. Who wouldn’t love that!!

 

 

Grab your tickets today here!

• For more details visit: Mary Poppins
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