The director on how Tom Hanks faced the challenges of portraying a beloved national treasure in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – and why its audiences will come away changed
Early on in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a character expresses concern when she discovers that her husband, an investigative journalist, is writing a profile of the beloved children’s television presenter Mr Rogers. “Don’t ruin my childhood,” she says.
That line will pluck a particular string in the hearts of several generations of Americans who grew up with Fred Rogers, and then went on to parent children who grew up with him. “It’s the thing that people said to me every time they heard I was working on this movie,” says the director Marielle Heller. “For those of us who grew up with him, we feel like we knew him.”