Kate Winslet

But when I walked him onto set,

to meet Helen Mirren for the first time she started a couple of weeks into our shoot and we were already into a flow and she was there in the hospital room and I said do you know who that lady is and I full on absolutely thought he was going to say that's Dame Helen Mirren or the Queen or something like that and he said yes that's Nana June oh wow and he was I was like

Okay.

And my work is done.

And so it just meant that I was able to roll the cameras without the children knowing.

And we as adult actors would be established in a state of make-believe that they would just fold into and follow along.

So it was really about playing for them.

And that definitely helped in terms of bringing the joy, because children bring the joy in everything, in every situation in life.

And it made a really big difference in terms of just...

them feeling relaxed and being able to improvise very freely.

With the children, we pretty much abandoned any scripted lines.

And I would say, don't learn anything, please.

And they'd be like, what?

You know, the older ones particularly, having been very studious and learned all of their dialogue really well.

And I said, and please make lots of mistakes.

We love mistakes.

Okay, go.

And they were like, mistakes?

Because then it's just giving them permission to be and be really free.

And all of those lovely natural things that they came out with were captured and made it into the film.