Twenty-five minutes into "Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical," Miss Agatha Trunchbull appears onscreen for the first time. She's initially introduced in glimpses — crooked teeth, thin lips, intricate uniform, severe updo — but the camera then zooms out to reveal a new version of the well-known villain, thoughtfully reimagined over the course of a decade and played here by an unrecognizable Emma Thompson.
"People think Miss Trunchbull is just a lot of opportunity for comedy, which there is, of course, because she's such an outrageous exaggeration of a character," said the film's director, Matthew Warchus. "But if you don't have anything in your core about the character, your comedy is unfettered and meaningless and just bounces around in an arbitrary way.
"It's important that Matilda has the enemy she deserves for her victory at the end to be meaningful. So in order for this movie to work, everything had to come together to create this very real, formidable opposition."
