I had the privilege of meeting and chatting with Director Peggy Holmes for the movie Secret of The Wings, so I was happy when I found I’d be interviewing her again. This time for the upcoming Disney Fairy movie, The Pirate Fairy.
After taking a bunch of cute pictures in the lobby of Disney Toon Studios, we able to watch a screening of The Pirate Fairy (which was a good movie – review in a future post).
After the movie, we were able to chat with Peggy Holmes & Jenni Magee-Cook.
Here’s what they had to say…
This is an amazing movie with an amazing cast. How did the casting go about?
Peggy: Well in the Fairies Franchise series, our main girls Tinker Bell, Silvermist, Rosetta, Iridessa, Fawn and Vidia have all been cast since the beginning….So we have Jason Henkel here who’s like our casting director and he’s fantastic. In this particular case, for the cast we added: Christina Hendricks (Zarina) and Tom Hiddleston (James), we worked with Jason, we talked about sort of what we wanted, what the characters were like. Then he brought a list to us.
Jenni: In this case they are our top picks for each character, which was incredible.
Tell us why you chose Christina Hendricks for her role as Zarina
Jenni: We really wanted that character to come to life…and we really wanted you to like her. We wanted to find a character that was likeable but yet you could understand had made a big mistake, and goes away. She also had to be powerful, I mean, she’s a seven inch fairy fighting pirates. So she’s got to be vulnerable and sweet out front. But then she’s got to be tough when she’s a pirate, so it took a really big range of acting and Christina Hendricks is amazing.
We all knew her from Mad Men and we knew she could have that sharp tone- tough wit, but she has such a sensitive soft side to her also. She also has such a passion and was really excited by coming in and doing a fairy. She’s a huge Disney fanatic. We showed her around the building and we were in the story room showing her art and she was totally in the story and it dawned on her, she was going to be a fairy. That was huge because her and her husband go to Disneyland all the time…and so to become a fairy and part of the Disney legend, she was just thrilled to do and you can see that on what she brought to the screen.
Tell us why you chose Tom Hiddleston for his role as James
Peggy: Tom Hiddleston was our first choice…and one of the great things about Tom is first of all he’s a triple threat. He can sing, dance and act, which is amazing. He’s got a really extensive education background…
Tom really understood for this character that Hook is a bigger than life character. So we listened to the original book Hans Conried (original voice of Hook) and what Tom understood very clearly was that it was a big performance but it was believable for the day. Tom understood he had to do a bigger than life character, a bigger than life performance that was believable for today’s audience and Tom got that right off the bat…our thought was that basically Hook is not as bitter, and evil as he is in Peter Pan yet because he hasn’t had all the failures. But you can see he’s going to start to have a lot of failures and a lot of things that go wrong for him. He’s got big ideas that just don’t work out. So Tom really had a handle on how to make this character super charming and loyal and very unassuming and then make that flip, which was great.
Any funny stories about filming you can share?
Peggy: The white shirt Tom was wearing was very starched, and he looked lovely as he came in to record. But it was so starched, and he’s so physical that when he gets up to record, he’s moving his body and the the shirt was going [SWOOSH! SWOOSH!] so we had to get him a Disney ‘toon T-shirt.
Start to finish what was the time period for completion?
Peggy: You know, we actually made this film in fifteen months.
How did you come up with the idea to tie this into Peter Pan and did you need to get a ton of approvals for that?
Peggy: We knew we wanted Zarina to make a mistake and run away from home. And I wanted her to come back, because that is what Disney is all about; it’s what Tinker Bell is about. She has a huge heart. Tinker Bell knows all about making mistakes and owning up to them. That’s the kinda gal she is. And she’s super loyal. We know that from Peter Pan. So we wanted Zarina running away from home. They live in Neverland, so where was she going to go?
We were in a story meeting with Jenni, myself, the other directors and writers, and [Chief Creative Officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios] John Lasseter. And we’re throwing out ideas. Where could she go? What could happen? Almost two hours had gone by and all of a sudden John pounds his fist on the table… which always means something is coming.
Jenny: Like the light bulb just popped in his head.
Peggy: We all looked at him, and he goes, “Pirates! She could run away and get hooked up with pirates. The pirates of Neverland.” And from there a whole story just unfolded. So once he said that, we’re like, “Oh my gosh! We could introduce a young Captain Hook! Oh my gosh, we could bring in the crocodile!” So that was approval that day.
I love the way it’s for boys and girls, was this meant for both?
Jenni: Yeah it’s doing really well with boys, I mean, it, in general boys don’t tend to always be the market we have for this audience. But every time we screen we, we’ve brought boys in for our general audience screenings. And I have boys and my boy is almost thirteen and he said I’m not just kissing up to you, mom. I actually like your movie. (Laughing) It’s almost like as if he said he loves me in public.
Were there any songs that didn’t make it into the movie that you wished made it?
Jenni: That’s so normal that it happens but on this one, no.
What was it like working with Christian Siriano from ‘Project Runway”?
Peggy: He’s really fun. We were really lucky because when we sent him the idea of the story and sort of what we were thinking about, it was easy for Christian to relate to the characters. Christian could relate to Zarina kind of being a little bit on the outside, as we know he has kind of forged his own way in his own career. Christian really liked Zarina and once he was interested, we got on the phone with him and talked to him a little bit more about the character, and he actually said he started sketching while we were on the phone.
With all the fairies, will there be spinoffs?
Jenni: You know we don’t have anything that we can talk about, ’cause it, it’s a director driven studio. So what we really do here is when the directors have a story they want to tell, that’s what they bring to the table and they decide to tell that story. And they talk about it with our teams.
Peggy: But we are in production on the next fairies film.
About The Pirate Fairy
From the world of Peter Pan comes The Pirate Fairy, a swashbuckling new adventure about Zarina (voice of Christina Hendricks), a smart and ambitious dust-keeper fairy who’s captivated by Blue Pixie Dust and its endless possibilities. When Zarina’s wild ideas get her into trouble, she flees Pixie Hollow and joins forces with the scheming pirates of Skull Rock, who make her captain of their ship. Tinker Bell (voice of Mae Whitman) and her friends must embark on an epic adventure to find Zarina, and together they go sword-to-sword with the band of pirates led by a cabin boy named James (voice of Tom Hiddleston), who’ll soon be known as Captain Hook himself. With laughter, heart, magic and thrills,
The Pirate Fairy sets sail April 1, 2014.
Disclosure: I went on this trip as part of a Disney press trip. All of my travel, lodging and meal expenses were covered by them. No other compensation was received. However, all opinions/thoughts are 100% my own.
