Julie Andrews was offered a cameo in the new Mary Poppins but turned it down

The remake of the 1964 classic Mary Poppins is one everyone's excited for and while Dick Van Dyke makes a singing and dancing comeback in Mary Poppins Returns, Julie Andrews was no where to be seen.

Apparently, it wasn't because of a lack of trying; director Rob Marshall told Variety that he approached Andrews about making a cameo early on but she declined out of respect for Emily Blunt, who was tasked with putting her own spin on the beloved flying nanny.

Marshall shared, “She immediately said no. She said, ‘This is Emily’s show and I want her to run with this. She should run with this. This is hers. I don’t want to be on top of that.'”

Blunt reaffirmed Marshall’s comments during another interview: "She was very hands-off with the whole thing. There was discussion about, you know, that maybe she would come and do a bit in the movie and she was so generous actually. She said to Rob, ‘Do you know what this is? This is Emily’s version of her and I don’t want it to be that she’s playing Mary Poppins the whole way through but then I come in and there’s like oh, but there’s the real Mary Poppins, you know?'”

Mary Poppins Returns hits theaters on December 19. Funnily enough, its major competition will be from Aquaman, a superhero movie that features Andrews as the voice of an underseas creature named Karathen.