Ben Whishaw, as Paddington Once More, Is Here to Make You Feel Better

Paddington was not part of my childhood. I was a Muppet kid, and Fozzie was my comfort bear of choice.

Instead, Paddington came to me as an adult. In 2015, an exceedingly polite, marmalade-slurping fellow in a floppy felt hat and blue duffel coat arrived in theaters and offered an uplifting story about tolerance and pluck. Three years later, the euphorically reviewed “Paddington 2” delivered a reassuring — calming — message about the ugly chaos of modern life: Keep believing in goodness. It’s still out there.

So when I recently had the opportunity to talk to Paddington himself, I couldn’t help but turn the interview into a therapy session.

It wasn’t actually Paddington, of course. I was on a video call with the British actor Ben Whishaw. He voices Paddington in the PG-rated franchise, the third installment in which, “Paddington in Peru,” arrives in theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday. Our chat was supposed to be about an imaginary world where optimistic bears carry umbrellas and tuck sandwiches under their hats. On the day we spoke, however, my mind was consumed by the real world — the Los Angeles fires, the turmoil of a changing presidential administration, my mother needing heart surgery.

Paddington! Say it’s all going to be OK!

“I understand,” Whishaw said gently, sounding identical to Paddington in every syllable. “You feel like nothing is stable anymore.”