‘Mary Poppins’ Star Karen Dotrice Reveals Dick Van Dyke’s On-Set Pranks (Exclusive)
What To Know
- Karen Dotrice fondly recalls Dick Van Dyke’s playful on-set pranks and antics during the filming of Mary Poppins, describing him as a “big kid” who kept the child actors entertained.
- She shares memorable experiences from filming, including the floating tea party scene where Van Dyke’s daring stunts inspired the children to join in the fun despite safety concerns.
- Dotrice emphasizes the warm, family-like atmosphere created by Walt Disney and the adult cast, making the filming experience enjoyable and memorable for the child actors.
If you grew up watching Mary Poppins and thinking it must have been fun to be one of the child actors, Karen Dotrice has news for you: you are absolutely correct. The actress, who played Jane Banks in the film and appears as a talking head in the new PBS special American Masters: Starring Dick Van Dyke, which premieres on the channel on December 12, 2025 at 9/8c, remembers her experiences on set as “such good fun.”
And much of that fun, she recalls, came courtesy of “big kid” Dick Van Dyke, who was prone to pranks and pratfalls whenever the cameras stopped rolling. “He’d do anything for a laugh,” Dotrice recalls. “Because he was a big kid, he kept we kids incredibly entertained.”
She shared her favorite on-set memories with ReMIND in advance of Van Dyke’s 100th birthday on December 13, 2025.
What Dick Van Dyke was really like on set
Dotrice came from an acting family; her father performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and her parents hung out with Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, and Laurence Olivier. “And suddenly I’m on set in Burbank, California with this total clown [Dick Van Dyke],” she recalls. “And it was like, wow, this is so much more fun than the theater.”
“Julie [Andrews] had a lot of responsibility and she didn’t want to break character too much. I mean, she did, but she wanted to have that kind of Mary Poppins stature throughout, which was fair enough,” says Dotrice.
However, Van Dyke was dedicated to cutting up the cast and crew whenever he could: “Dick was just a silly, naughty boy, badly behaved, doing pratfalls everywhere, making you laugh, and then you’d have to kind of straighten up because the camera was on and you couldn’t stop giggling.” Van Dyke was especially prone to silly on-set pranks: “He would do things like steal our toffee apples or get the prop boys to make the toffee apples a horrible flavor for the Supercalifragilistic thing. … he’d do anything for a laugh. So because he was a big kid, he kept we kids incredibly entertained.”
“Oh no, he was doing back flips on these wires.”
One particular memory sticks out: when the cast filmed the floating tea party scene.
In order to film the sequence, which sees the children and Van Dyke’s Bert float along the ceiling with Mary’s Uncle Albert (Ed Wynn), Van Dyke, Wynn, Dotrice, and Matthew Garber (who played her on-screen brother, Michael) had to be raised up with special effects rigging. “We were hoisted 40 feet off the ground and there were just mattresses down below us,” Dotrice remembers. “If the wires are broken, there would’ve been a lawsuit.”
While the group sat at a floating table, “Dick Van Dyke, who should have been sitting there just having a cup of tea and a bit of a laugh — oh no, he was doing back flips on these wires. He was spinning around. And so my brother, [Matthew Garber], he started doing that. And I thought, ‘well, I’m a well-behaved kind of Victorian raised kid. Forget about it — I’m going to do it, too.’ My chaperone and mum were on the ground going, ‘Stop it. Stop it. Behavior yourselves.’ And we had a blast.”
“It didn’t seem like work at all”
Walt Disney Co/Everett Collection
Van Dyke wasn’t the only adult involved with Mary Poppins who was dedicated to creating a fun atmosphere. Dotrice and her family also got a warm welcome from Walt Disney (“Uncle Walt,” as she remembers him), who “just made us feel like family.” After his own difficult youth working for his parents’ business, Disney decided “if he was going to employ children as he had been employed, he was going to make sure they had the best, best time. And he did.”
Filming, she says, “didn’t seem like work at all,” and the adult cast members “were really kind and generous to we kids, because it’s kind of monstrous to have to work with children and animals. But they did a very, very kind job.”
The crew, as well, “were completely still and watching the action” during filming. “The crew loved the film. And I soon learned from the adults that that was unusual. Normally you have to get the crew quiet on set and all of that, and everybody’s like, ‘I wanted to go and have a smoke’ …. But they were all standing behind the camera, just smiling and so joyful. So it was across the board — it wasn’t just the actors, it was the crew, it was the whole company.”
Dick Van Dyke ‘refuses to be old’
Dotrice and her old costar still see each other, even though she left acting several decades ago to focus on raising her family. In fact, they’re neighbors. “He lives around the corner and I see him in the supermarket,” she says. “I’ll run him into him in the produce aisle.” Van Dyke, she says, is “going to go out with a bang because he refuses to be old. He’s just not going to do it. And he can still do that side kick that he does with his legs. He’s unreal. He’s unreal.”
American Masters – Starring Dick Van Dyke airs Friday, December 12, 2025, at 9pm ET, on PBS. It will be free for viewers to stream at pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App from December 13 through January 8.
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