Mike Leigh Says Don’t Dismiss ‘Happy Go Lucky’s Protagonist As Just “Unadulterated-ly Happy”

Is he speaking to directly to Jeffrey Wells? At the New York Film Festival, director Mike Leigh insisted that simply writing off the “Happy Go Lucky” protagonist (Poppy, brilliantly played by Sally Hawkins, though the character is divisive to many) off as simply “unadulterated-ly happy” is to be unfair to what he calls his “anti-miserablist film” (he should know he’s made quite a few miserablists) “The thing about Poppy is that to describe her as being unadulterated[ly] happy is not really to understand her at all,” Leigh said at the film’s Q&A. We saw the film back in late August and while her character is aggressively happy and annoying initially, the film finds its groove after 20 minutes to be quite winning. Kinda love the dig that Leigh throws EW’s Lisa Schwarzbaum while answering the question.