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Paddington actor Sally Hawkins has said starring in third film Paddington in Peru would’ve “broken her heart” due to the absence of the franchise’s former director Paul King.
The 49-year-old played Mrs Brown in the live action comedies Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017) alongside Hugh Bonneville, 61, who played her husband Mr Brown.
When King opted to pass on the film series’ third instalment, Hawkins also waved goodbye to the project and followed the director to Wonka, where she played the mother of Timothée Chalamet’s young chocolatier.
Speaking to The Times, Hawkins said she feels “so awful” about removing herself from the cast of Paddington in Peru, but noted Bonneville “did get an upgrade” in her replacement, Emily Mortimer.
“Because I love Paul so much, and love the way he works, it would’ve broken my heart,” she said of her decision to exit the film, which was instead directed by Dougal Wilson.
Hawkins met King at a theatre workshop at Ealing Studios, 20 years before the first Paddington film.
Although the actor described her experience working on Paddington as “a gift”, she noted she often becomes “embarrassed” by fans of the films approaching her in the street.
Sally Hawkins in ‘Paddington’ (StudioCanal)
“It can really upset me,” she said. “Because you don’t know why people are smiling at you or staring at you, or being aggressive and weird to you…You just want to live but it can cripple you.”
Paddington in Peru was released in November 2024, seven years after the franchise’s acclaimed second instalment.
Paddington in Peru follows the Peruvian bear’s journey to his South American birth place, where he visits his beloved Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears.
The film was received less positively by critics than Paddington and Paddington 2. In a three-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey said the bears’s “usual tomfoolery” was “underutilised”.
“It’d be delusional to think that Paddington had anywhere to go but down,” she wrote. “It appears director Paul King may have packed up most of that magic and taken it with him over to last year’s Wonka.”