The Magical Faraway Tree Star Nicola Coughlan Talks Practical Sets, Silky’s Enid Blyton Easter Egg, and Potential Sequels

Enid Blyton’s beloved book series The Magic Faraway Tree has been adapted for the silver screen. Led by Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, it follows a family who rekindle their bond when they discover a tree that transports them to magical lands. In a conversation with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado, Nicola Coughlan spoke about the film’s incredible practical sets, Silky’s surprising backstory, and what she’d like to see in a potential sequel.

Stepping onto the sets of The Magic Faraway Tree was just as magical in real life as it was watching on screen. “The sets were so incredible,” Coughlan said. “It makes a massive difference as an actor, not just for the kid actors on set, but for the grown-ups to walk in.”

One of her favorite sets was Moonface’s house inside the Faraway Tree, which she praised for its intricate, handmade design. “In this world where everything is AI and we don’t know what’s real, we walked onto that set and everything was tactile,” she said. “Everything was there. You could see how everything had been made and hand-painted and hand-stitched.”

Even Coughlan’s costumes incorporated those details. “They sun-printed actual leaves onto the skirt, which is just so gorgeous,” she gushed.

Her favorite land to visit was the Land of Spells, which happened to be the final one the cast filmed. “It was just the culmination of it all,” Coughlan said. “I have just lovely memories when it comes to that.”

Then there was the Land of Goodies, where Coughlan admits the cast had a little trouble resisting the props. “I definitely ate some of that candy,” she said. “Everyone did. Everyone was very badly behaved in the Land of Goodies.”

While the production gave Coughlan the opportunity to physically step into Blyton’s imaginative world, her character Silky also goes on her own journey of self-discovery. In the Land of Birthdays, she wishes to be the fairiest fairy of all, but then realizes she’s happy with who she is.

But Coughlan revealed that Silky’s identity crisis doesn’t necessarily have a deeper meaning. Instead, it comes from a very specific detail in Blyton’s books and is an Easter egg for longtime fans. “What I think is really funny about that is it had no deep meaning really intended,” Coughlan explained. “It was an in-joke for Enid Blyton super fans because Enid Blyton never liked to look back on what she’d written. She wasn’t a fan of editing. She used to write and go forward and never backward.”

Blyton originally wrote Silky as an elf in the first The Magic Faraway Tree book before referring to her as a fairy in later installments. According to Coughlan, Blyton was not particularly interested in looking back at or editing her previous work. “So yeah, she’s an elf with a complex about why she’s not a fairy, basically,” she laughed.

With potential sequels being discussed, Coughlan is eager to return to the world. “This is an independent movie and that’s why it’s incredible it’s done so well over here in Europe. We want people in America to go and see it because if you go and see it then we get to make as many as we want,” she said. “There’s so many more lands to explore. There’s so much to tell.”

But she had one request for future installments: “We want to get Andrew and Claire up at the tree too. I think it’s time for the grown-ups to have a little adventure as well.”

After leading roles in The Magic Faraway Tree and Bridgerton, Coughlan is no stranger to stepping into beloved fictional worlds. But when asked which fictional world she’d like to explore next, her answer took a dark turn. “I’m reading In Cold Blood [by] Truman Capote,” she said. “Something to do with a real-life crime, which is very different. You want to be as different as the last thing, so that could be fun.”

That desire to do something completely different also extends to the stage. Following her run in The Playboy of the Western World, Coughlan has a few musical dream roles in mind. “I always wanted to do Cabaret,” she said, though seeing other actresses tackle the role so brilliantly recently has made her reconsider. Instead, she offered another possibility: “Maybe Sweet Charity. That could be fun.”

Before Coughlan takes on whatever comes next, audiences can see her as Silky when The Magic Faraway Tree arrives in U.S. theaters on August 21.