Angela Lansbury has joined the cast of Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns
Angela Lansbury is the latest addition to the cast of Walt Disney Pictures‘ Mary Poppins Returns, the all-new sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins. A five-time Tony Award winner and the recipient of an honorary Academy Award and three Academy Award nominations, Angela Lansbury will play the Balloon Lady, a character from PL Travers’ original children’s books.
Angela Lansbury joins a Mary Poppins Returns cast that also includes Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt (The Girl on the Train, Into the Woods) and Emmy, Grammy and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, Moana), Ben Whishaw (SPECTRE), Emily Mortimer (Hugo) and Julie Walters (Harry Potter films) with Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins). In addition, Dick Van Dyke plays Mr. Dawes Jr., the chairman of Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, which is now run by William Weatherall Wilkins (Firth).
Directed and produced by Oscar nominee, Emmy and DGA Award winner Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Chicago), Mary Poppins Returns also introduces three new Banks children, played by Pixie Davies (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Nathanael Saleh (Game of Thrones) and newcomer Joel Dawson.
Set in 1930s depression-era London (the time period of the original novels), Mary Poppins Returns is drawn from the wealth of material in PL Travers’ additional seven books. In the story, Michael (Whishaw) and Jane (Mortimer) are now grown up, with Michael, his three children and their housekeeper, Ellen (Walters), living on Cherry Tree Lane. After Michael suffers a personal loss, the enigmatic nanny Mary Poppins (Blunt) re-enters the lives of the Banks family, and, along with the optimistic street lamplighter Jack (Miranda), uses her unique magical skills to help the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives. Mary Poppins also introduces the children to a new assortment of colorful and whimsical characters, including her eccentric cousin, Topsy (Streep).
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(Photo Credit: Amanda Edwards / WireImage)
