Emma Thompson says an injury on the set of Roald Dahl Matilda the musical made her stop and think about life as an aging artist.
Speak against People ahead of the film’s streaming release on Dec. 25, the Oscar-winning actress shared how she navigated an ankle fracture she suffered while filming the musical, which stars Good luck to you, Leo Grande actress as villain Agatha Trunchbull opposite Lashana Lynch’s Miss Honey and Alisha Weir’s Matilda Wormwood. It was an injury she attributed to aging.
“I fell over for no good reason and broke my ankle, and I thought, ‘That’s kind of weird, I’ve never hurt myself like that before. Huh, it’s because I’m getting older,'” Thompson recalled.
The actress said the injury forced her to wear a foot shoe, for which she apologized, as Thompson felt it would mean she would likely have to put off any stunt work the film had planned for her until it was finished.
“I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I have to put the boot on,'” Thompson recalled. “They said, ‘It’s okay, you’re doing a stunt today.’ What did I say? I just broke my ankle.'”
Thompson added that production continued confidently despite her own hesitations about the possibility due to the nature of the stunt. “They said, ‘It’s okay, we’ll just turn you upside down. It’s fine, you’re on a crane,'” she explained. “I said, ‘Okay, all right.'”
The experience was one that gave the Matilda star a little pause as she realized, “I was no longer as invulnerable as I thought.”
“Even though I’m strong, as I get older I can hurt myself, and that was interesting,” she said of the incident. “My body is changing and I have to be more careful with it.”