5 Magical Things We Learned About ‘Mary Poppins’ From Julie Andrews’ ‘GMA’ Interview

It is arguably one of the most memorable roles of her career, but while Mary Poppins was released more than 50 years ago, lead star Julie Andrews still recalls plenty of it — and she shared some of those things in a recent interview with Good Morning America.

The 84-year-old sat down with Diane Sawyer for a chat now that the actress’ new memoir Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years  is on shelves. During the interview, Julie opened up about the 1964 film that nabbed her an Academy Award, even revealing that she remembers her first take on the set as the legendary character — a scene that included her costar Dick Van Dyke. “Dick said, ‘You look very pretty today, Mary Poppins.’ And all I had to do was walk across camera and say, ‘Do you really think so?'” the icon recalled.

“She was very sure,” Julie said of her confident character. “That’s for sure.”

In 2018, a sequel to the classic Disney film titled Mary Poppins Returns and starring Emily Blunt was released. However, Julie made it clear that she wouldn’t mess around with Emily’s take on the role, as “she was very hands-off with the whole thing.” “There was discussion that maybe she would come and do a bit in the movie, and she was so generous, actually,” The Devil Wears Prada actress, 36, told Variety during an interview at the time.

“She said to [director Rob Marshall], ‘Do you know what this is? This is Emily’s version of her and I don’t want it to be that she’s playing Mary Poppins the whole way through, but then I come in and there’s, like, oh, but there’s the real Mary Poppins,'” Emily recalled. In fact. Julie was all for this new version.

“She’s seen it, she said, ‘I loved it’ in huge capital letters, and the email that she sent was literally, I can’t tell you how long [it was],” Rob once told the Press Association. “She said Emily was wonderful, she loved her voice, she loved every single person in the cast. She was just over the moon about the whole thing. I was relieved and thrilled.” So wonderful!

Scroll on down below to discover five more things about the original Mary Poppins!