Despite her latest role being filled with plenty of musical numbers, Mary Poppins Returns star Emily Blunt has revealed that she is not a fan of singing in front of people.

The 35-year-old actress recently admitted to the Herald Sun that belting out notes in front of a crowd isn’t exactly as easy as she makes it look on screen. “I much prefer singing alone in the car or in the shower or by myself in the house,” Emily explained. “I was never that person at a party who would want to sing in front of people.” The mother-of-two even went as far as to reveal a certain something she needs if she’s going to grab the mic in front of folks. “Even in Karaoke, I need a lot of tequila to do it,” she said.

Emily, who is married to actor and director John Krasinski, also said that singing was always so personal to her, so she was embarrassed to do so in front of other people. And that may come as a surprise as Emily has been in other singing roles before, like Into The Woods. And while original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews, made the role famous, Emily said she didn’t want to impersonate the Sound Of Music star, as what she had done should be treasured and not “butchered” by her.

Emily Blunt
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Even though Emily may have felt nerves singing some tunes in front of the cast and crewt, director Rob Marshall still believes that she was the only choice to play the iconic magical nanny. “Rob basically said, ‘If you don’t want to do this with us, we are going to find something else, because we won’t do it if you don’t want to,’” Emily told Vogue in its December issue. In fact, Rob was so sure that he wanted to cast Emily that he told her “there wasn’t even a possible other choice” for the role.

You can see Emily sing her heart out alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda, Meryl Streep, and Colin Firth in Mary Poppins Returns out now.