Greta Gerwig explains why she cast Meryl Streep as Aslan in her new Narnia movie

Greta Gerwig recently discussed her adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel The Magician’s Nephew with Empire, explaining why she cast Meryl Streep as Aslan...

The cover also emphasizes the character’s heterochromatic eyes, which were inspired by David Bowie. Gerwig cites the “Life on Mars” singer and a number of other ’60s and ’70s rock musicians as key creative influences that helped her form the “big and transporting” aesthetic of the film, which she wanted to resemble a “rock opera” despite not being a musical.

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I’d hold off on the assumptions. This ain’t like a Walden Media production - it’s closer to a rock opera. Maybe, given that some inspiration has come from David Bowie, we can expect it to be a bit more like Labyrinth than like Prince Caspian.

To be honest, while the Walden films were very close to the books and I totally approve of the Christian allegory being brought forward in them, the problem is that frankly those books just aren’t much fun. Two of those films were dull as ditchwater. That’s why Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader saw diminishing returns compared to Wardrobe. The next film in the Walden sequence would’ve been Silver Chair but it just seemed like too big a financial risk, and disputes with the Lewis estate resulted in the contract lapsing.

So there’s no point grousing that this isn’t a Walden Media production and it won’t have the same feel as the earlier films. Even in Lewis’ own hand, The Magician’s Nephew was intentionally different in tone.

From what I’ve seen, the new movie is RESPECTING Lewis by aiming for a completely different beat to the Walden films - and that’s a good thing. TMN never was part of the Pevensie family’s journey - and as far as we know, Diggory and Polly never returned to Narnia.

“The Magician’s Nephew” always was my favorite book precisely because it is so stand-alone. It is nice to see ANY studio taking a punt on it.

And why not. In it, Jadis is a far more interesting villain. She’s genocidal, for crying out loud, she ain’t just in the business of making it always winter but never Christmas - which I always thought was spectacularly lame having read TMN before TLTWATW.

Uncle Andrew is quite the ass in TMN - and somewhat irredeemably so. Which made him far more interesting than Edmund or Eustace, who were both redeemed WAY too easily.

There’s a whole thing about multiverses in TMN that was decades ahead of its time - the Wood Between The Worlds, needing different rings to navigate. Stay too long and you’ll never remember where you came from.

When I saw the infinite corridor (in quantum superposition) in “Dark Matter”, and the plot explained how you’ll lose yourself / never find your way home if you don’t have the drug to keep your mind intact, I immediately saw the parallels.

After destroying her own world with The Deplorable World, Jadis piggy-backs into ours and thinks she’ll easily be able to conquer it. Her assumption is rapidly undermined by her encounters with everyday British folk. That entire segment in the book is the funniest thing in the entire Narnia canon.

Uncle Andrew is an obsequious sleaze. Casting Daniel Craig to play him is an inspired choice.

There are some signs of some really neat in-jokes in the new film too. They’ve already released a shot of Jadis stood outside the a pub called The Eagle and Child. That happens to be the pub that became the meeting point of choice for the Inklings - the writers’ group that Lewis and Tolkien were both part of.

All of which means, I’m very relaxed about the casting choice. Aslan talks, sings and growls (because Andrew is too obtuse to understand talking animals). Liam Neeson might work for the talky bits, but actually they aren’t the best bits of Aslan in THIS story.

And let’s not forget, Glenn Close played a male pirate in Hook and literally nobody even twigged it was a woman, let alone realise it was her. (She’s the one who ended up in the Boo Box.)

Who’s to say Meryl Streep can’t make it work and hasn’t taken the job on for roughly the same reason Glenn Close did?

That’s somewhat inaccurate.

(Declaration of interest: my late father-in-laws went to school with him, and we’ve spoken a few times - so as a family we’ve known him since before he was famous.)

Neeson’s from Ballymena and he’s always had a lifelong, restless fascination with various religious perspectives and questions of faith. Nothing unusual about that - a lot of folks who grew up in sectarianism get very curious once they move away, and some “dabble” in different faiths and denominations.

I get that. I grew up in the Methodist tradition. There are also Quakers, although one of my uncles is an Anglican priest. I don’t really subscribe to any one denomination, and have never been interested in converting; I feel most at home around Quaker and Methodists. However, I’ve been to Pentecostal churches and found the experience profoundly uplifting.

At university, my social circle was quite diverse - and our student dorm was probably the only place in town that’d regularly invite door-knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and other groups, in - and we’d talk with them for hours!

In 2010 Liam Neeson suggested that Aslan could symbolise “all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries” - and I read that as, while a Christian reader would see Jesus in Aslan, Muslims would see Muhammad, Buddhists would see Buddha, and Sikhs would see Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

What Liam Neeson said is NOT the same as saying “Aslan is Muhammad”.

What people have done, unfairly I think, is combine two different things he said at different times. Liam Neeson spent some time in Turkey and he talked about how the noise of the Muslim call to prayer at 5am drove him batty for the first week- but he got used to the sound, then he started actively listening to it. He said it “got into his spirit” and described it as “the most beautiful, beautiful thing”.

But he’s had many spells in his life where he’s experienced a religion or denomination that is different to the Catholic tradition he grew up in. Instead of him avoiding those experiences, he embraces them and he learns from them.

I wouldn’t read too much into it. Liam Neeson is just a deeply spiritual man; he is not a Muslim convert.

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