“There’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even if their child is the most disgusting thing you can imagine, they think it’s wonderful.” That’s how it starts Perhaps it is the best known book by Roald Dahl, ‘Matilda’. The novel, his last great work, was published in 1988 and only eight years later an unbeatable film version of what seemed like a story impossible to adapt was made. If you haven’t seen it yet, hurry up, because it’s about to leave Netflix!
A book is a great friend
If we tell you the names of Matilda Wormwood, the Trunchbull, Miss Honey and Lavender, surely the whole movie comes to mind: the girl spinning around holding her braids, the endless chocolate cake, Matilda’s powers, the glued-on hat… ‘Matilda’ is not only a nostalgic movie: has passed the barrier to become timeless cinema.
Proof of this is that the story continues to receive adaptations: Tim Minchin conceived it as a wonderful Broadway musical (whose adaptation has just arrived in Madrid, by the way) which in turn will be versioned as a movie on Netflix itself in December. come on what Even if the original ‘Matilda’ is gone, her story will never die.
What many do not know is that behind this immaculate story, the protagonist, Mara Wilson, I was living a real drama while filming… at only seven years old. And it is that behind the smile and the good humor a tragedy was hidden: her mother was sick with cancer and was receiving chemotherapy while she was on the set. Although in the end her mother died (and the film is dedicated to her), Danny DeVito and her wife, Rhea Perlman, they kept an eye on Mara before, during and after filming, taking care of her between takes. Even now, she still considers them her favorite aunt and uncle.
Danny and Rhea would take me to the theater to see a play, or to the movies, or to hang out at their house. It kept me really distracted, and I could be happy.
to eat cake
This was not Wilson’s first film role: already had an unexpected success with ‘Miracle in the city’, and the scripts were piling up in his house until he discovered the adaptation of the book, which had fascinated him ever since he heard his mother read it to other children when he was four years old. Y turned out to be the perfect Matilda in every way in a film so faithful to the book that, paradoxically, it can make many detach themselves from reading a fabulous novel.
yes, originally who Danny DeVito wanted was… The Olsen twins! Their children were big fans of ‘Forced Parents’, but they were busy shooting ‘Two for the Price of One’. They did not win with the change, the truth. Or if? One thing that is never talked about about ‘Matilda’ is that it really it was a box office flop: It cost 36 million dollars and barely raised 33.5 in the United States. So that later they say that the box office is everything.
Despite the baracazo at the time, it has more than recovered over the years. In fact, Danny DeVito has once commented that he wanted to make a sequel to ‘Matilda’, but only while Wilson was a girl. She now she would have to use Matilda’s daughter, since the actress is 32 years old. I don’t know Danny If something isn’t broken, it’s best not to try to fix it.
Here we have arrived
In addition, it does not seem so easy for Wilson to return to work in the cinema. And it is that if you want to see his film career you have it very easy. At the age of thirteen, he decided that he had had enough cinema and went to school after starring in the infamous live-action version of ‘Thomas and Friends.’ It would take fifteen years to return to the audiovisualafter playing herself in some episode of the Nostalgia Critic universe (remember when it was relevant?).
She’s stepped away from the cameras, but she’s still a voice actress on ‘BoJack Horseman’, the ‘Welcome to the Night Vale’ podcast, she’s written a play for Broadway (well, for off-Broadway), He worked in an NGO that helps students at risk and is dedicated to writing novels., especially children. In the end she has turned out to be the Matilda we all wanted, deep inside, for her to be.