The Belgravia actress takes on conniving housekeeper Mrs Wickens, who ploys to steal a child\u2019s inheritance with the assistance of her pyromaniac husband Mr Wickens, played by Gatiss, who also adapted and directed the film from Antonia Barber\u2019s 1969 fantasy novel The Ghosts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not often asked to play proper baddies but I did play a baddie in Inside No.9, so maybe there is something about those League of Gentleman [Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton] that see that part of me!\u201d Greig told press including RadioTimes.com<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m pure evil and that\u2019s why I wanted to do this job. My children won\u2019t look at pictures of me. And they\u2019re adults! But what I didn\u2019t want to do was make [Mrs Wickens] a panto villain. Because the child-catcher is really frightening. There\u2019s nothing comic about my character.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want her to be pushed into that realm where we can laugh at them therefore they\u2019re not so frightening. I think Mr and Mrs Wickens are quite frightening. But it\u2019s a delicate balance because you don\u2019t want the children to be in floods of tears over Christmas and their parents cursing you because their children won\u2019t sleep until Easter. So it\u2019s a very delicate balance.\u201d<\/p>\n Greig\u2019s transformation into Mrs Wickens includes a ferocious red wig, a frightening black bonnet, fake teeth and an 1820s empire line dress with a sinister-looking chatelaine \u2013 a belt hook around her waist to hold all of her \u201cimplements for torture\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the skin diseasing has been given to me,\u201d she continued. \u201cI think she\u2019s a deeply sensitive woman, everything she reacts to is seen on her skin and she can\u2019t live with herself. So there\u2019s lots of scratching and unhappiness in her body and that works out by killing children.\u201d<\/p>\n The Amazing Mr Blunden follows Simon Callow as the titular hero who comes to the plight of a struggling single mother and her three children at Christmas, moving them out of their small London flat and into a sprawling countryside estate. It\u2019s on the overgrown grounds that two of the teenage siblings Jamie and Lucy Allen encounter two ghost children from the 1800s who need them to travel back in time with Mr Blunden to prevent Mrs Wickens from carrying out her audacious scheme.<\/p> Jamie and Lucy are played by newcomers Jason Rennie and Tsion Habte, and children from the past Sara and George Latimer are played India Fowler and Xavier Wilkins. The 1972 film \u2013 directed by Lionel Jeffries \u2013 starred Diana Dors in the role of Mrs Wickens, who was cast because the role went against her typical type of \u2018blonde bombshell\u2019.<\/p>\n Greig says the remake is dark and foreboding, but full of love and redemption too, all of which appealed greatly to Gatiss.<\/p>\n \u201cMark is quite dark, but you\u2019d never know that,\u201d the Friday Night Dinner star continued. \u201cThis is pretty dark, I think it\u2019s pretty dark, they\u2019re [Mr and Mrs Wickens] trying to kill children. It doesn\u2019t scream Christmas does it? [But] The central character isn\u2019t the amazing Mrs Wickens, it\u2019s the amazing Mr Blunden, he\u2019s the redemptive catalyst for the story, so that\u2019s obviously why it\u2019s well-placed for Christmas. It\u2019s obviously about love and how stories can be redeemed, which is exactly what Christmas is about.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there has to be this terrible fight with the dark side \u2013 it\u2019s the heart of all the grim fairy tales it\u2019s the heart of Star Wars, it\u2019s at the heart of Lord of the Rings \u2013 it\u2019s about how you\u2019re going to defeat the powers of the darkness in the form of a child killer. But it has to be sacrificial. It\u2019s the ultimate act of laying down his life and I think that is why I think Mark was so moved by it. Because he\u2019s interested in the dark but it\u2019s powered by love.\u201d<\/p>\n The Amazing Mr Blunden will air on Sky Max and streaming service NOW on Christmas Eve. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0or visit our dedicated\u00a0Fantasy<\/a>\u00a0hub for the latest news.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n![\""Amazing\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/11\/Amazing-Mr-Blunden-fab5f1a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"Amazing\\"\/")
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