Last Christmas took Emma Thompson eight years to make

Emma Thompson has been working on Last Christmas for eight years.

The two-time Oscar winner was first approached to develop the story, based on the 1986 holiday hit George Michael recorded as a member of Wham!, back in 2011, but she initially struggled to turn the simple premise into a full feature.

She ended up recruiting her husband, Greg Wise, to help with the task, but it took a few more years before the project was picked up for production.

"We started writing this movie, me and my old man..., eight years ago, just on a walk... and we were talking about the story because it was supposed to be based on Last Christmas (the song)...," Emma recalled on U.S. morning show Live with Kelly and Ryan.

"But if you think about the lyrics to that song, it's not a lot of story... and I thought, 'I don't know how much interest I'm going to pull out of that.' So then I had this idea about it, which I mentioned to my old man, and then we built it, but it took so long to get it made, because it always does."

Emma is saddened the romantic comedy wasn't completed before the 2016 death of pop icon George, who had given his blessing to the premise, but she's glad they didn't rush the film because they would never have landed Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and Crazy Rich Asians hunk Henry Golding as the leads.

"In the meantime, I met George, and he was the most amazingly wonderful person," she continued. "Then of course, sadly, in 2016, he died, so we lost him, but we would not have had Emilia, who, as it turns out, can really sing... and is brilliant, and Henry Golding, who we didn't know could ice skate - he's a great ice skater! We needed all of those things (for the movie)."

Emma also stars in Last Christmas, which is directed by Paul Feig.