{"id":676831,"date":"2026-09-07T12:55:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T12:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676831\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T12:55:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T12:55:36","slug":"director-susanne-bier-on-practical-magic-2-i-thoroughly-enjoyed-being-invited-into-the-sisterhood-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676831\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Susanne Bier on Practical Magic 2: \u2018I thoroughly enjoyed being invited into the sisterhood\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Practical Magic, a wacky adaptation of a novel by Alice Hoffman, starring Nicole Kidman<\/a> and Sandra Bullock<\/a> as sisters from a long line of romantically cursed witches, was released, in 1998, it lost money, grossing $68 million against an estimated budget of $75 million. It also baffled critics with its angular marriage of romantic comedy, witchcraft, autumnal colour schemes and domestic abuse. <\/p>\n

But over the years it has gained a cult following. Susanne Bier<\/a>, the Oscar-winning director of In a Better World, was not among the whimsigoth \u2013 yes, that\u2019s a thing \u2013 faithful. Until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t seen it until I was approached about a sequel<\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cOnly then I watched it and loved it. I loved Sandy and Nicole, Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing. I loved the fun and the wildness. So I thought, okay, we\u2019re going to take something that has such a seductive call and embrace, but still make something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Practical Magic 2 first look: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return for cult classic sequelOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I meet Bier in London a few hours before Practical Magic 2\u2019s premiere. Nearly three decades after the original film flopped, franchise fans are queuing outside the hotel where the director is staying. It\u2019s a sign of the times.<\/p>\n

In theory the instant, collective-discovery potential of streaming might have made Hollywood less dependent on the past. In practice, studios have learned that familiarity is one of the few reliable currencies in an overcrowded content economy. <\/p>\n

The latest iteration is the announcement of Days of Thunder 2, which will bring Tom Cruise back as Cole Trickle decades after the original; next year audiences are expected to get Heat 2 and Shrek 5, bringing two more long-dormant favourites back to multiplexes. <\/p>\n

What looks at first like nostalgia is also a new industrial logic: streaming has turned decades of movies into a reservoir of recognisable intellectual property. So Practical Magic 2 features three Oscar winners on screen \u2013 Kidman, Bullock and Wiest \u2013 and another behind the camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had worked with both Sandy and Nicole before,\u201d says Bier, who directed Bullock in the Netflix smash Bird Box<\/a> and Kidman in two TV series, The Perfect Couple<\/a> and The Undoing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s very different with the two of them together, because the effect isn\u2019t doubled. It\u2019s multiplied by 10 or something. The energy between the two of them is incredible, because they really stimulate, challenge and enjoy each other. That makes it very energetic and vivid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PracticalPractical Magic: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in the 1998 original <\/p>\n

Practical Magic 2, which is based on Hoffman\u2019s 2021 novel The Book of Magic, drafts in Joey King and Maisie Williams<\/a> as Kylie and Antonia, the younger generation of Owens witches. When a family curse strikes again, Kylie journeys to their ancestral home in England, hoping to break the hex and save her comatose boyfriend. She is duly pursued by her mother and aunt, who squabble all the way across the ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a sister, so the sisterhood thing was something that I was kind of invited into, and which I really thoroughly enjoyed,\u201d Bier says. \u201cI have two brothers, and throughout my childhood most of my friends were boys. Coming into sisterhood as a grown-up, in a very, very deep way, made me appreciate it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have friends who are like sisters, where we kind of know everything about each other. That feels like a very deep comfort and recognition for me. I wasn\u2019t brought up with it, but it talks to the idea that family can be something broader than just what you\u2019re born into. I think that\u2019s very meaningful and really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bier was born in Copenhagen in 1960 into a Jewish family whose history had been shaped by displacement and war. Her father\u2019s family left Germany for Denmark<\/a> in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. Following the German invasion of that country during the second World War<\/a>, the family fled to Sweden. After the war they returned to Denmark, where Bier grew up. It is no accident, she says, that so many of her films explore the precariousness of family life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about the links between my films and family history,\u201d says Bier. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a huge curiosity about families but also a natural understanding of family dynamics. So I think anything to do with family immediately attracts me and immediately feels like material that I can recognise and utilise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PracticalPractical Magic 2: Sandra Bullock, Joey King and Maisie Williams in Susanne Bier’s film. Photograph: Warner Bros <\/p>\n

Bier initially pursued art and design rather than film-making, studying in Israel before moving to London to attend the Architectural Association. She abandoned architecture after several years but says the training still comes in handy, especially for long-form prestige television \u2013 notably The Night Manager<\/a> and The First Lady \u2013 that she has become synonymous with in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an architect you understand the blueprint,\u201d she says. \u201cYou take a step back and look at the biggest picture. I think what I\u2019ve done as a director very much utilises that skill. When I\u2019ve done TV shows that have been six or even 10 episodes, you need to understand and think about the bigger scheme of things. You need to know where every character and scene fits. And as a director, one of the most important things is to navigate big decisions and small decisions, and prioritise. I learned all those things as an architect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Night Manager: Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine. Photograph: Des Willie\/Ink Factory\/BBC <\/p>\n

In a Better World<\/a>, Bier\u2019s international breakthrough, in 2010, set a family crisis in Denmark alongside the work of a doctor at a Sudanese refugee camp, skilfully connecting morality, violence, parenthood and geopolitics. It won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best foreign-language film.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose if you get an Oscar, you do get invited to meetings that you didn\u2019t get invited to before getting an Oscar,\u201d Bier says. \u201cHaving said that, there is this weird thing in Hollywood that you\u2019re never better than your most recent work. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just relax and lie back and think that everything is fine. You have to keep asking yourself all the important questions. I think in life you have to always ask, \u2018Am I doing the right thing? Is this what it\u2019s meant to be?\u2019 Being a person who can keep asking those questions is also part of one\u2019s creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I never thought of movies as a limited intellectual medium<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bier\u2019s subsequent transition into English-language film-making hasn\u2019t always been easy. Things We Lost in the Fire<\/a>, starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro, arrived in 2007, followed several years later by Serena<\/a>, a period drama with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Neither film matched the critical or commercial success of her Danish work. But working across languages is its own reward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI direct a lot with my face or with my hands and things like that,\u201d she says. \u201cSo there\u2019s a part of me that thinks maybe I could direct in Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bier found her anglophone groove with prestige television. Since her 2016 serialisation of The Night Manager, based on John le Carr\u00e9\u2019s book, Bier has become a regular at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Television and streaming have brought a whole new fan base.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought of movies as a limited intellectual medium,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was always a part of me that thought if I\u2019m doing something, I want it to be something that I honestly believe audiences are going to want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Bier has been flattered aplenty. Like It Never Was Before, her third feature, was reworked as a play; After the Wedding was remade in English by Julianne Moore and her writer-director husband, Bart Freundlich; Brothers was remade in English by Jim Sheridan and inspired an opera by the Icelandic composer Dan\u00edel Bjarnason. She is a properly influential figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have kids they grow up,\u201d she says. \u201cThe responsibility goes away a little bit. I do find it very rewarding that people want to take my things and make other things with them. And I don\u2019t feel that I have to be controlling it or feeling responsible for it. It\u2019s a great feeling. Let me just enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Practical Magic 2 is in cinemas from Friday, September 11th <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Practical Magic, a wacky adaptation of a novel by Alice Hoffman, starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,382,18,117,19,17,213640,100150,10420,27615,30114,258536,286430],"class_list":["post-676831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-denmark","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lars-von-trier","tag-maisie-williams","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-sandra-bullock","tag-second-world-war","tag-susanne-bier","tag-thomas-vinterberg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117229868788632936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}