He’s been one of the world’s most beloved fictional characters for almost 70 years now. With his blue duffle coat and red hat (most likely hiding a marmalade sandwich tucked away in case of an emergency), Paddington carries with him a sense of nostalgia for those who grew up reading about his adventures. Thanks in particular to the recent film series and the soft-spoken, gentle voice Ben Whishaw has given to the classic character, a new generation of filmgoers have come to love him just as much.

Whether he’s writing letters to Aunty Lucy or having tea at Buckingham Palace with the Queen to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, Paddington’s legacy has endured because writers have taken good care of this bear. Most recently, these writers are Mark Burton (Madagascar, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Jon Foster (The Adventures of Paddington, Queen Elizabeth and Paddington Bear Film) and James Lamont (The Adventures of Paddington, Queen Elizabeth and Paddington Bear Film), whose film Paddington in Peru sees the Brown family head to South America when Aunt Lucy goes missing from the Home for Retired Bears. New characters such as Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) and Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) add intrigue and mystery to the quest, but the film’s overarching theme of family and emphasis on Paddington’s goodwill fits this third installment in nicely with its predecessors.

Burton, Foster and Lamont spent years on the script, each one bringing his own unique comedic voice to the story and characters. We spoke recently about their process, their careers as writers to date, and what they love about Paddington Bear.

Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont

How did the writing collaboration between the three of you on this project come about?

Jon: We all worked on the previous Paddington movies doing various things and rewrites here and there. James and I worked on an animated TV version of Paddington called The Adventures of Paddington, which we did for three seasons. Meanwhile Mark was already starting a story for Paddington 3 with Paul King and Simon Farnaby and James and I got a call asking if we wanted to come on to write with Mark. We were obviously delighted and it was the first time we worked together. We just went from there and it was a long and beautiful process. There were a lot of iterations of the script, but I think the heart of what everybody wanted to do at the start remains until the end of what you see onscreen.

What was it like to take on a beloved icon? What do you find enduring about the character of Paddington?

Mark: For me personally, I come from the town that Michael Bond, the author of Paddington, comes from. It was always quite personal to me and growing up, it was a part of my childhood.

The great thing about Paddington is his incredible belief in the goodness of human nature. And I think that’s the heart and soul of why the films are so successful, why people find it such a nice world to be in. We realized that we wanted to maintain that element of how he always seems to find the good in people so we made sure to guard that aspect of his character.

James: Paddington famously arrives at the train station with a luggage tag around his neck that says, “Please look after this bear.” I think anyone who works on this project, whether it’s the films or the TV shows or anything else, feels like that tag was written for them and that it’s their duty to please look after this bear as best they can. That’s something that we all tried to do at every stage in the process.

What was your process like and how did you approach writing together?

Mark: Well as you’ll know, avoidance is obviously the first thing you have to get through when it gets to the actual work. We thrashed things out together and then went off into our corners to draw stuff up separately…and then came back to put it all into a sort of big, collective washing machine of writing.

Jon: People will always ask me, “How do you come up with the material? Do you just write the lines the characters say? Who writes the bits in between?” And I tell them, “You have to produce all of that.”

Obviously it changes as you go, but most of the work is really behind the scenes – the storyline, the characters, the character arcs, the journey. And that involved a huge amount of discussion between the three of us over time – tinkering, changing, moving things around. This was all before we had even written one draft of the script. We probably spent longer on the storyline than the actual drafting, and then the drafting itself happened in “rations” that we split up. We’d maybe write thirty pages each, compare them, swap… that kind of thing.

Mark: You’ve got a three-dimensional process in which you’re writing material that’s going out to other stakeholders, whether that’s the director or someone else – everyone wants in on it. Part of the process is to be able to manage those notes you get and to see what’s causing them, but also to not necessarily just do what everybody else wants. You have to own it. We listened, explored what the notes were saying to us and then took it forward that way.

James: Jon and I have worked together for years. This was the first time that we worked with Mark, but it was all very natural and smooth, and we all had a very similar process. As they say, there was lots of discussion, outlining and thinking. When it came to the actual writing of the script, we’d all take pages individually, draft them and then bring them to each other to read. There’d be some conforming as well – “I said this in my pages, you said that in yours, so let’s work out what’s best and make it fit throughout.”

Jon: That system is what makes it quite fun because you’re aware that you’re trying to make the other two people laugh or be emotional when you deliver your pages. You’re saying, “OK, I think the guys might like this.” They can have an opinion on it, but you’re also being presented with an audience that way.

I should probably also mention something called table chips. When we first started writing this, which was before COVID, we used to meet up a lot more in person, in various places around central London, one of which was the restaurant at BAFTA. We often used to get chips (fries) for the table to eat while thinking things through. It was a way of extending the day.

Mark: Three might seem a slightly irregular number to be working on a screenplay, but it works well because you’ve always got a majority. Sometimes with a partnership, you hit a point where you think, “Where do we go from here?” Both of the others might disagree, which is very healthy. You’re faced with the question of how you get out of that situation, and with three of you, there’s a dialectic, a kind of moving forward. That can be quite useful in its own way.

Let’s talk about the character of Reverend Mother, which seems so perfectly written for an actor like Olivia Colman. Did the character continue to develop after the role was cast?

James: I think you always try and write with a sort of actor “shape” in mind, if that makes sense. You think, “OK, this role in our heads is this type of an actor” and you hope and dream that you might get the kind of person that you want… but even if you don’t, you’re writing with that in mind. Obviously when someone like Olivia or Antonio comes on and you can visualize their voice and their qualities, that does begin to inform the writing again. If anything, it just gives you a bit of confidence in what you’re writing because you think these actors are going to be able to pull it off.

Aunt Lucy (Olivia Coleman) and friends. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Mark: It goes the other way around as well: when you create that character, you don’t necessarily start out with someone in mind. We obviously were very excited to have Olivia Colman join but we didn’t initially write the character thinking, “The is Olivia.” We started out wanting to channel Julie Andrews for this movie. You create a character, then suggest casting. Based on who’s cast, you can then lean into that casting more strongly in the way James is saying.

In this type of film, villains are frequently charismatic and sometimes as likeable as the other characters. Tell me about how you approach writing the villain in a story like Paddington’s.

James: To be a bit granular, it’s often really helpful that your villains reflect the negative opposite of your lead. That’s something that’s really interesting to think about when you’re working on them, when you’re developing them and when you’re plotting their actions. In this film, Paddington is certainly someone who’s considering his family and his origin, and where he comes from, how that’s important to him. He’s searching for his aunt. Hunter, on the other hand, is someone who is at risk of throwing his family away in order to get gold. So those two reflect each other and that’s quite a helpful thing to think about when deciding what type of villain is appropriate for your hero story.

Do you have a favorite character to write for?

Jon: Paddington! The great thing about Paddington is that he’s an anchor in every scene and every moment. Something we’ve talked about before is, if you’re trying to work your way through the next part of the story, or you feel like you’re getting stuck and not quite sure about the scene or what you’re doing, you can always think, “What would Paddington do? What would he be saying?” Often, it’s quite a good barometer. What is his moral view – or naïve and funny opinion – on the situation like? What is a silly thing he could do? It is a real privilege to be able to have a character like that at the center of any scene.

Mark: Henry Brown. Speaking as a risk-averse, grumpy middle-aged man, I don’t know why, but I feel myself drawn to that character…

He’s great as a comic foil, because you know where he’s coming from. There’s an element to his character in the movie that actually originated with Hugh Bonneville. Henry’s been the risk-averse character in the first two movies but in this one, he’s trying to leap free of that. You can almost feel him turn his head, and it breathes new life into his character. So I think he’s another fun one to write.

Jon: The other great thing about Henry’s character is that he gives this realist, grounded point of view the whole time. But it’s obviously from a very funny place, and he is quite often shocked by situations they get into.

How do you approach writing a script that will appeal to both parents and children? Is there certain material targeted towards each audience demographic?

Mark: I think you always do something that you are engaged in and value yourself. There might be some guardrails in terms of some of the material… but I think we’d argue that we don’t do gags for adults and gags for kids as two separate parts of the film. I think you try to do universal jokes that both adults and children can enjoy, even if maybe in a slightly different way.

I suppose it’s part of getting inside the tone of it; sometimes there will be a joke that maybe sits just outside that and you can still use it. But generally speaking, I think we write what makes us laugh.

James: I think with a film like this, you’ve hopefully get a lot of age ranges coming to the cinema. You’ve got young kids, teenagers, parents, grandparents… and you want to make sure that themes and arcs within the story relate to all of those different people. We’ve got a teenage boy who doesn’t want to leave his house. We’ve got a teenage girl who wants to fly the nest and explore her own world. We’ve got parents who are wrestling with their family growing up and apart, and we’ve got Paddington in the middle trying to make sense of it.

It’s about finding touchstones. My children are very young and I can already imagine them growing up; Mary’s storyline in this movie is about her fear of her family growing up and part of that’s very resonant. I can imagine it’s not as resonant for a fourteen-year-old boy, but hopefully some of Jonathan’s story is. You try to play those different notes across the script so that you keep everyone on the journey with you as you go.

Jon: I might be speaking for myself here, but sometimes it’s amazing what can scare a younger kid. You might have to pull back on something because, like Mark said, often the best jokes serve kids and adults alike. It might be that there’s a moment that’s too dark, or a roar is too loud. We had little things like that which you have to tweak and change as you go.

You all have had very interesting career paths as writers, and have backgrounds not only in comedy but music as well. Is there anything in particular you have learned along the way that has stuck with you over the years?

Mark: One thing (in terms of my own career which goes back a very long way) is that you kind of build a toolbox that you take with you into the next phase. I started off writing gags and sketches and so on and then got into sitcoms on the telly and then feature films. I think what was useful was to go, “OK, this scene needs a joke. And I can do that.” That’s what it was for me, everything I did would provide me with resources for the next stage of my career, which was quite a useful thing.

Jon: Having started in live comedy, I learned very early on (in my early twenties) what the rhythm of a joke in front of a crowd is. That’s a very different medium, when you’re telling sketch comedy or doing stand-up, because there is something you take from that. The rhythm of different types of jokes, the types of things you try – that broadens as time goes on.

Something I’ve learned as a writer is you should always start writing before midday. It’s quite a good rule of thumb. You must write something, even if it’s just the smallest scene or a few words, or just a line. If you start after midday, suddenly it’s lunchtime… the day drifts on.

James: The thing with writing is that every script, whether it’s film, TV, whatever… it’s always different. It’s like a little puzzle that you have to solve for those characters. So it’s always your first script, in a way, because it’s always different and it’s always new. But the tools that you use to solve the riddle are the same. You learn your tricks and craft and apply it to the new script each time.

Mark: That’s what makes writing interesting – there’s a different chemistry every time you approach a script. We’ve seen that even great, great screenwriters can sometimes make a bad script. I think that every time you engage in that process, you don’t quite know how it’s going to go and that’s what keeps you sharp and never complacent about it.