Jamie Dornan on Homeschooling and Having Patience | Video
Jamie Dornan Explaining His Kid’s Lack of Maths Skills in His Irish Accent Is the Best Thing to Happen to My Friday
Jamie Dornan is finding the humour in a number of his current situations that have resulted from staying at home with his wife, Amelia Warner, and their three daughters, Dulcie, Elva, and Alberta. With three kids under the age of 8, let's just say that Jamie's in the thick of it right now. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Jamie touched on the joys of homeschooling, teaching his daughters — and himself — patience, and the hilarious lengths he went to in order to get his kids excited about his role in Trolls World Tour.
"There's times where it's incredible and you're so thankful for the time, and there's times when it's just the opposite of that — you just want to run away from them," he joked of sheltering in place with his family. He added, quite flatly, that yes, they're homeschooling their daughters during this time. "The word I've always tried to instill to the kids is 'patience.' You're always telling them . . . 'Just wait — patience, patience, patience,' and I've never had to tell myself more a word [than I have while] homeschooling."
Apparently, his middle daughter Elva's maths skills are partially to blame. "I was doing maths . . . the other day and she had like, two plus two, and she was like 'Yup, got it' . . . she got that it was four. Then she got, you know, three plus four. She got it, seven. Then it was two plus two again," he said, mimicking the way his nearly 5-year-old had to think really hard about once again adding the numbers to four. "I was going . . . you just had two plus two — it was seven seconds ago — surely you remember that. Obviously their brains just don't work like that," he said, adding that he has to check himself in the patience department most during those moments.
But it's not all frustrating schoolwork keeping this family of five busy. The actor played the role of smooth jazz troll, Chaz, in Trolls World Tour last year; and he may have been more excited to watch it with his family than his kids were.
"So, this is what happened," he says to Jimmy, who asked if, like his two young kids, Jamie's daughters watch the animated movie on repeat. "I did [the movie] for them, I basically pleaded with Universal Pictures to put me in that. So, I was like: 'It's coming out in two weeks, guys! Daddy's going to be in this movie! It's coming out next week . . . it's coming out in three days, it's coming out tomorrow.' [They were] so excited, there was pandemonium excitement in the house. And then it comes out, it's the day, and I'm like, 'OK, I guess I buy it?' I buy it on iTunes and it's like 17 pounds, so like 25 dollars."
His daughters loved the movie, so as kids do, they asked to watch it again . . . and again, and again. "I think I bought it four or five times," he said. "After a week I got a thing from my agent going, 'Oh by the way, Universal were in touch saying there's a code you can use whenever you want to watch Trolls.' And I was like, oh great, I've already spent like 300 dollars."
Jimmy shared a tip that all veteran parents know: just buy the movie from the jump. But because of the pandemic and movies being pushed to on demand rather than theatres, it didn't work like that. "In my defence, at this point you couldn't buy it, you could only rent it for 24 hours." (P.S. Trolls World Tour is now on Hulu.)
See the entire interview, in which he also discusses his new movie, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, above. The combo of Jamie's hilarious stories and his Irish accent makes for a truly delightful watch.
