Carey Mulligan: “I Want to Work With Greta Forever” After Filming Narnia
In a recent interview for French fashion Magazine Elle, the BAFTA-winning British actress Carey Mulligan spoke about her experience working with Director Greta Gerwig on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.
“Oh my goodness, I loved it. I want to work with Greta forever. Seeing her in her element directing was just amazing – she’s just unbelievable. I’ve not seen a single moment where she has looked stressed or unhappy or any sort of normal emotion that you might feel directing an absolutely enormous film like this. She’s a complete joy – and that was infectious to the crew. Just the happiest crew, best cast. I can’t wait to see what she’s put together.”
Mulligan was one of the first confirmed cast members and has remained consistent in her praise for Gerwig and the production as a whole.
In August of 2025 she brought up her longstanding desire to work with Gerwig, stating that it felt like a “kind of a pinch-me moment. So yeah, I’m just feeling incredibly lucky.”
The film’s shoot wrapped on January 30st and is set for a Thanksgiving IMAX release, followed by a Netflix premiere on Christmas Day.
Congrats to LentenLands on their first news write-up!
266 days to go!
Glad Carey enjoyed it and is sounding positive about the movie. All the actors sound positive whenever they talk about the movie :-).
Hello, Lentenlands! Congratulations! I look forward to reading more of your articles.
In this reimagined version of the prequel, the dusty Victorian parlors are replaced by the grey, soot-stained atmosphere of 1950s post-war London. Digory and Polly navigate a city still scarred by the Blitz, where secret passages through attic crawlspaces are cluttered with discarded gas masks and old shortwave radios rather than brass trunks. Their adventure begins not with mere “magic,” but with the reckless curiosity of the Atomic Age, as Uncle Andrew is transformed into a rogue Cold War scientist experimenting with forbidden energy and strange, glowing rings that hum with the terrifying potential of early quantum physics.
When the children are propelled into the dying world of Charn, the story takes on a chillingly modern resonance. The Empress Jadis is no longer just an ancient sorceress but a lethal femme fatale who embodies the ultimate nightmare of the mid-20th century. Her “Deplorable Word”—the single incantation that wiped out every living soul on her planet—serves as a haunting metaphor for nuclear annihilation. In this setting, Jadis represents the cold, calculating ego of a superpower willing to vaporize a civilization rather than surrender control, making her arrival in a 1950s London already obsessed with fallout shelters and radar screens feel like an inevitable doom.
Ultimately, the birth of Narnia acts as the supreme antidote to this era of scientific dread. As Aslan’s song brings forth a world of vibrant color and talking beasts, it stands in stark opposition to the grey, mechanized world of the 1950s and the radioactive silence of Charn. This version of the story highlights a timeless struggle: the choice between a technology that seeks to dominate through destruction and a creative, spiritual harmony that builds life from the ground up.
This is everything I want this movie to be
As you have inside information, could you please share some more? Especially about Aslan!
Whenever interviews like this come up (involving cast and crew of this Narnia project), I keep hoping that they will mention Narnia or Lewis, only to be disappointed over and over again. All they really talk about is the opportunity to work with the director, like that was the
soul reason they signed on to do the film, and never mention the opportunity of bring the source material to life. I’m not saying I’m surprised. Just disappointed. It would be really refreshing if somebody directly involved with this movie came out and said something along the line’s of “How wonderful it is to bring this series to life again”, or something generic like that. Instead of hearing “this is not your grandmother’s Narnia”, and nothing else for months. Ugh
My impression – though I could be wrong – is that they have been told not to say anything about the movie. However, the one thing that anyone could guess anyway, is that they enjoyed working with Gerwig. (Since everyone in Hollywood was saying that before filming started, it seemed.) Therefore, in order to say “something” , they are permitted to talk about how much they loved working with Gerwig.
Hopefully, when the more active and busy promotion of the movie happens in November, they will have good things to say about the books.
Pretty sure Emma Mackey has briefly talked about how much the books mean to her on multiple occasions. Composers Andrew Wyatt and Mark Ronson have both separately talked about loving the Narnia books growing up too.
Greta Gerwig has a whole page of her various quotes talking about the books and Lewis: https://www.narniaweb.com/everything-greta-gerwig-has-said-about-netflixs-narnia-movies/
I agree though it’s feels like those are few and far between. But to be fair, most of the questions they get asked are specifically about working with Greta Gerwig so it makes sense that’s what they focus on.
I’m impressed that Greta never appeared stress on set. That’s a sign that she had a great team all on the same page or she’s a superhuman because as a director myself, I can say that it’s very easy to get stressed out on set. That or she let out all her stress in private, something else I’ve had to do in the past.
Seems like she stresses and has her nightmares during writing before filming, based on her comments from a few years ago!
Even so, that’s still impressive. It must have been an effective pre-production is all I can say with little going wrong at the last minute.
If Greta and Carey start acting like the actresses from Wicked, crying during interviews and holding hands and talking more about each other than the actual movie they worked on, I would not be surprised.