James McAvoy has hinted that he would gladly step back into the world of Narnia, saying he could see himself returning as an “older Mr. Tumnus” in Greta Gerwig’s planned new take on the beloved fantasy series.
Now 47, McAvoy originally portrayed the well-known faun in 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The part helped raise his profile internationally and later inspired a surprisingly devoted online following.
While appearing on the BIFA Podcast to discuss his first feature as a director, California Scheming, the actor was asked what it was like to potentially hand the character over as Gerwig moves ahead with her Netflix adaptation.
Netflix has since confirmed that Gerwig’s film is an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth book published in C.S. Lewis’s series but the first in the story’s chronological order. The project has also been given a release plan of a global IMAX and theatrical launch before arriving on Netflix in 2027.
McAvoy, though, reminded listeners that the new films are expected to begin with a different chapter from C.S. Lewis’s series.
“They are starting with the book before… They’re doing The Magician’s Nephew,” McAvoy explained, noting that Tumnus doesn’t actually appear in that story.
“So Tumnus does not appear… you can keep the crown.”
When it was suggested that later installments might still create an opening for his return, McAvoy leaned into the idea and joked that an aged-up Tumnus might still be possible.
“Tumnus only really appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy,” he pointed out.
“And I think The Horse and His Boy takes place a lot longer later. So maybe there’s a shout that I could play the older Tumnus. Whoa. That will… bring about the frenzy. I’ll shoot the mic and the internet.”
In another part of the conversation, McAvoy looked back at the start of his acting career and said he sometimes used his natural Scottish accent almost like a performance device during auditions.
“My ability to change my accent was almost like, ‘Oh my god, look at this trick that this Scottish guy can do,'” he recalled.
“I’ve come in: ‘All right, man. What’s going on? You all good? Let’s go for a take.’ [Switches accent] ‘Hello, sir. I’ve never before seen the color of your eyes gleam so bright.’ And they’d be like, ‘Oh my god, you can really act!'”
McAvoy also discussed why California Scheming became the project he chose for his first turn behind the camera. The film tells the outrageous real-life story of two Scottish rappers who pretended to be American in order to land a record deal.
According to the actor, once people knew he wanted to direct, he kept being offered scripts focused on deprivation and hardship in Scottish housing schemes.
Because he was raised in a Glasgow scheme himself, he said he wanted to present working-class communities in a way that included energy, comedy and aspiration, instead of reducing them to misery.
“Everything that I was fielding was gritty drama set in Scotland and council estates. And I did want to tell stories about people in council estates… but I didn’t want to tell a story about, you know, poverty through the lens of poverty porn,” he explained.
“The filmmakers become interested in the people who are suffering, suffering, suffering, not the people who are striving, striving, striving.”
He added that he grew up on entertaining, crowd-pleasing films such as Back to the Future, and wanted his first movie to reflect that spirit. Rather than making another subdued and downbeat social drama, he aimed for something lively, funny and cinematic that working-class Scottish audiences would genuinely be excited to see.