Earlier it had been announced that actor Ralph Fiennes would be playing the villainous principal, Miss Trunchbull, in Netflix’s upcoming movie adaptation of the Matilda musical. However a recent news break has revealed that Fiennes will not be playing Trunchbull after all. Instead the character will be played by British actress Emma Thompson.
Playbill and Pop Sugar reported the news of Thompson’s casting about a month ago. Thompson has starred in the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Matilda is a children’s book written by Roald Dahl, who also wrote James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, and many more classic stories. In 1996 Dahl’s book Matilda was famously adapted into a movie, which starred actress Mara Wilson as the titular protagonist. Eventually Matilda the Musical debuted in the 2010, and the musical was an adaptation of both the book and the movie. As stated earlier this new Netflix movie is an adaptation of the Broadway musical.
In the musical the character of Miss Trunchbull is typically played by a male identifying actor, unlike in the movie version where she was played by actress Pam Ferris. This is probably why many people speculated that Fiennes would be cast in the role of Trunchbull.
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