When Tami Stronach’s father was approaching the end of his life, he expressed a wish for the family he would leave behind. The magic of movies and a witch’s lair in Knightswood meant they were able to grant it.
“One of his last wishes was that his granddaughter, our daughter Maya, could maybe come to Scotland to attend school and spend some time in a place where her family once came from,” said Stronach, best known as the child star of 1980s kids classic The NeverEnding Story.
“My dad [eminent Scottish archaeologist David Stronach] was such an incredible presence in my life, and it was really magical that upon his passing, we had the opportunity to come to Scotland to make this film and bring our daughter with us. It’s been very meaningful. It’s a bit like coming home.”
Stronach invited the Herald on Sunday to visit the set for a behind the scenes peek at her movie comeback - not in the back-lots of the Hollywood system, but instead in the unlikely location of Knightswood Community Centre, in the north of Glasgow.
Inside a building normally used for zumba groups, AA meetings and dog training classes, lies an incredibly-detailed mystical witch’s lair, at the heart of a world which smashes together the dual genius of Scottish comedy favourite Still Game and Muppets’ creator Jim Henson’s Creature shop studios.
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The 51 year old, who played The Childlike Empress in the mystical 1984 movie, will be seen in her first leading role in 40 years when her new film Man and Witch” the Dance of a Thousand Steps premieres in London tonight.
Stronach stars in the fantasy opposite her writer husband Greg Steinbruner, who she produced the project with, attracting a knock-out nostalgia-cast including fellow 80s movie icons Sean Astin (Mikey from Goonies) and Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown from Back To The Future) alongside British comedy stars Jennifer Saunders, Bill Bailey and Eddie Izzard.
Gary Tank Commander star Stuart Bowman, currently appearing in the Rebus reboot, and Game of Thrones’ Daniel Portman are among the film’s Scottish cast, with Still Game’s Greg Hemphill also making an appearance, directed by his former Craiglang overseer Michaell Hines.
The film was originally destined to be shot Stateside, but was changed to Scotland to take advantage of authentic medieval backdrops like Doune Castle and Stirling Castle.
Steinbruner initially conceived the idea as a short film, but gradually developed the script into a full feature.
He said: “The simplest element of the story is that there’s a man who has been cursed to never take a wife. He goes to a witch to try to break the curse, and she gives him three tasks in order to break his curse. It’s a fable, we wanted it to feel both familiar and unique. So there are big fantasy film tropes but we also enjoy subverting certain stereotypes. We are letting people have their cake and eat it too.”
Stronach’s parents shielded their daughter from the impact of child fame following her 1984 breakthrough.
She said: “After NeverEnding Story, my family and I decided I wouldn’t pursue becoming a child actor. But the arts were deep in my bones and I went on to become a dancer. I kept slipping into plays in New York and worked in theatre for years. I definitely didn’t disappear, but we live in a time when if things weren’t captured digitally, people almost think they didn’t happen.
“In a strange way, I feel like all the projects I did before this are coming together in this moment. It’s so thrilling that my husband wrote the story and I had the opportunity to weigh in on it with him and help develop it longside him. It feels like a gift to be able to return to something I really loved, and this is a special situation.”
The Herald visited the otherworldly Knightswood location on the final day of filming, which coincided with the couple’s wedding anniversary.
“You might wonder how calling your wife a witch could qualify as an anniversary present,” said Stronach, laughing. “But when people see the film it will make sense.”
“There’s a slight autobiographical component to the film,” said Steinbruner “ Tami and I are playing the lead roles of Man and Witch and there is something about us in the film which goes beyond the big characterisations of those characters.”
For director Hines, who ran every episode of Still Game and the three live shows at the Hydro, leading his first feature film with a bona fide Hollywood legend wasn’t quite how he expected it would go.
“I ended up directing Christopher Lloyd on his scenes via an iPad from my back bedroom in Anniesland,” said Hines.
“It was 4am and Christopher Lloyd was doing his scenes in a tropical garden in Santa Monica, with me giving direction from an iPad screen.”
Many of the cast provide voices for puppets made by the Henson company, but the film - which was also shot in Duncarron medieval village, Mugdock Park in West Dumbartonshore and Glasgow’s Queen’s Park - also includes real animals.
Hines said: “We have a sheep, a goose and a dog and a talking donkey. We’ve created a unique world which doesn’t exist anywhere else. And that’s what’s been most interesting for me.
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“Sewing together a two hour piece of work, and not half hour episodes, has been a really enjoyable learning curve for me.”
For Stronach, there’s been a satisfying circularity to the experience.
“When I was a young person coming to New York pursuing dance, I didn’t want to think about NeverEnding Story, I desperately wanted to make my mark away from it.
“I didn’t even put it on my resume and most people I worked with didn’t know I was even in it. “Then after I had my daughter, it was weird, there was a resurgence around the film.
I was invited to a Comic Con after that I started to appreciate I’d part of something meaningful for a lot of people. So I started to embrace it.
“It’s all about the value of storytelling and having the courage to create a more humane world in our imagination, that translates into the real world. Stories like this can help us have more compassion, patience and curiosity about one another and the world around us.”
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