Muriel’s Wedding director P.J. Hogan and star Toni Collette are back together for a suburban comedy that celebrates mayhem, titled Mental.
Hogan also wrote the script, inspired by his own experiences, ‘about a charismatic, crazy hothead who transforms a family’s life when she becomes the nanny of five girls.’
More precisely, the new Aussie film is about a mother who can’t cope (Rebecca Gibney) and a busy politician father (Anthony LaPaglia) who ships her off to a mental hospital under the guise of a holiday and unable to deal with the girls himself, he recruits a hitchhiker named Shaz (Collette) off the street to be their nanny.
However, gaining weight for dream role in Mental led Gibney to a terrifying health scare. She made it clear to Hogan that she wanted the role of Shirley Moochmore, but it almost had a dire consequence:
I would do whatever it takes, put on weight, because I wanted this role so much I would do whatever to get it. I put on 14 kilos in eight or nine weeks and I found out towards the end of gaining the weight that I was insulin resistant and pre-diabetic. I was one step away from diabetes so if I had put on more weight I would get diabetes. So I stopped and we decided to employ the use of a fat suit.
Well, let us all forget about this unpleasant episode and check out the trailer below:
Mental opens in Australian theaters on October 4th, 2012 with no US release planned yet.
