Nativity
Get into the festive spirit this week with the release of Nativity starring Martin Freeman and Ashley Jensen.
This Christmas, primary school teacher Paul Maddens is charged with producing the school's nativity play.
Competing against the posh rival school for the honor of best reviewed show in town, the stakes are raised when Paul idly boasts that his ex-girlfriend Jennifer, a Hollywood producer, is coming to see his show with a view to turning it into a film. The only trouble is - they haven't spoken in years.
Maddens suddenly finds himself a local celebrity and at the center of quarreling parents and over-excited children desperate in their bid for fame.
Here's all you need to know about the movie.
- They say you should never work with children or animals Nativity! flies in the face of this! Indeed, over 100 children star in the film as well as camels, pigs, sheep and a donkey!
- Martin Freeman enjoyed getting the opportunity to work with such a vast number of children while making the film. "The children were largely brilliant, occasionally difficult just because they're children and they way outnumbered me," he said.
- The film boasts a cast with a host of British favourites including The Office actor Martin Freeman, Extras star Ashley Jenson, Ricky Tomlinson and a special cameo by Alan Carr.
- Ben Willby, who plays the character of Bob, turned up at the audition as a result of an advert in his local paper. Debbie knew she had found someone special from his very first audition: "In walks a very little boy, about five or six years old, wearing fluorescent green lycra shorts and matching leg warmers.
"I just looked at him and thought, Thank you, God! This is what I’ve been waiting for! I knew straight away that I’d been sent someone very, very valuable. I asked him to show me his special skills and he started street dancing".
- Producer Nick Jones said the number of children and animals was not without problems though. "When [Debbie] contacted me and said let’s do a movie with kids and let’s do it around a Nativity play and see what happens I said Yes! Great. Where do I sign?
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. And then you get into children’s working legislation and Debbie starts asking for goats and pigs and camels. And later on, she’s talking about flying kids from the top of Coventry Cathedral".
- It comes from the brilliant and visionary writer and director, Debbie Islitt (who previously directed the smash hit comedy ‘Confetti). Debbie says she was originally inspired by watching her daughter in a Christmas performance, "It gave me the idea and I must have gone to see about 16 nativity shows in Coventry for research," she said.
- Alan Carr has a funny cameo as a newspaper critic reviewing both nativities
- The film is part-scripted and part-improvised, and this is what makes it so uniquely successful, Debbie argues. "It’s special because it is so spontaneous. Not only the actors but every single person on set is improvising.
"Normally, filmmaking isn’t that kind of world. It’s a world of money and bond companies and insurers where everybody is looking over everybody else’s shoulder and checking time and motion. It’s not the kind of world where people just do what they feel like in the moment.
"But it is absolutely my mission to ensure that keeps happening because it makes the set a truly wonderful, creative place."
- The film is released 27th November across the UK.