Paddington in Peru has 'enormous heart and a lot of marmalade', Hugh Bonneville teases

Watch: Hugh Bonneville talks Paddington in Peru

Paddington in Peru is an adventure worth waiting for, Hugh Bonneville tells Yahoo UK, because it is “full of all the fun” that has come to be expected of the franchise.

The film, which premieres in November, sees Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) and the Brown family — headed up by Bonneville's Henry Brown — head to, you guessed it, Peru in order to visit Paddington’s aunt Lucy. As well as another stellar supporting cast headed up by Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas, Bonneville teases that the threequel has “enormous heart”.

Speaking about the film with Yahoo UK for a Role Recall interview ahead of the release of his new ITV series Douglas is Cancelled, the actor says of the upcoming film: “The trailer has just arrived, and we've got wonderful new guest artists. Antonio Banderas is this Fitzcarraldo-type adventurer who runs a river boat and takes the Brown family up river.

"And we've got Olivia Coleman as the Reverend Mother who runs the home for retired bears where we've all gone, now that Paddington has his passport, to visit Aunt Lucy. But when we arrive we discover that she herself has gone off on an adventure, so we must go and find her.

Read more: Everything we know about Paddington in Peru

"So it's a quest to find Aunt Lucy, and it's glorious. It's full of all the fun and adventure that the first two films had and, as you'd expect, with an enormous heart and a lot of marmalade!”

It’ll certainly take a lot to beat the joyful reverie of Paddington 2, which featured Bonneville’s Notting Hill co-star Hugh Grant as the delightfully fun bad guy Phoenix Buchanan. It was a very different role for Grant, but one that has proven his skills in camp villain roles that he has thrived in since. Bonneville even loved it so much he feels Grant deserved an Oscar for it.

“When we were rehearsing it up at the studio we calculated it was 19 years since we've been in a rehearsal room together, so that made us both feel quite senior, I suppose,” the actor says.

Watch the trailer for Paddington in Peru

“This sounds deeply patronising coming from somebody younger than him, but he's developed into this amazing character actor. Everything from the Jeremy Thorpe role [in A Very English Scandal] to The Gentleman, to his performance in this.

“He was great, he grabbed it by the throat and really had fun with it and some of the funniest lines that he came up with that are in the script, or they're in the finished film, are his, and he was a joy.”

A memorable moment for Bonneville is Grant’s dance number that closes out Paddington 2, a scene he calls “absolutely fantastic”.

“I gathered yesterday they only took one day to film it," he reflects. "He was taught to tap dance and he pulled it off with such a plum and flare. He was glorious in the film. I think he should have won an Oscar for it, but there we are!”

Paddington and Paddington 2 are available to stream on ITVX and Netflix, Paddington in Peru will premiere in cinemas on 8 November, 2024.

Douglas is Cancelled is out now on ITVX and airs weekly on ITV1, and our full Role Recall interview with Hugh Bonneville is out now.