Meet Promising Young Woman Emerald Fennell
IN 2006, TWO 18-year-old actors met on the set of ITV crime series Trial And Retribution. Carey Mulligan played a young murder victim, Emerald Fennell her mean friend. That meeting was the beginning of a journey that, 15 years later, has led to an historic moment: Emerald’s status as the first British woman ever to be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars.
Emerald wrote and directed Promising Young Woman, in which Carey – nominated for Best Actress – stars as an unlikely vigilante. ‘Cassie’ spends her nights at clubs and bars, feigning drunkenness and waiting for predatory men to pounce. Once they’ve taken her home, she punishes them for their behaviour. It’s a timely film, both funny and thrilling. The first time Emerald attended a screening, a fight broke out. ‘I wanted to make a film that was thoughtprovoking, that people talk about,’ she said last year, ‘but I wasn’t expecting that.’
Emerald’s reaction to the Oscar news – the film is up for five gongs – was astonishment. ‘Never going to stop crying,’ she wrote online. ‘So proud and grateful to every amazing person who worked on this film.’ But those close to her are not surprised by her success. ‘I am so insanely proud of her,’ fashion designer Coco Fennell, Emerald’s sister, tells us. ‘She’s so funny and kind and works so hard. I’m so happy for her – and inspired by her.’
A close friend adds, ‘Emerald has always been a complete force. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the world saw what we’ve known for years.’ Phoebe Waller-bridge, who met Emerald on the set of period drama Albert Nobbs in 2013, told The New York Times that Emerald is ‘the most stylish person I’ve ever met. Not just in her work and her appearance, but in her spirit.’ She adds that Emerald works ‘like a bloody Trojan’, having balanced her screenwriting with acting – most notably in The Crown as Camilla Parker Bowles and Call The Midwife – a successful side hustle as a novelist and motherhood: she had her son in 2019. She has even spent lockdown tweaking Cinderella, the musical she’s written with Andrew Lloyd Webber. He calls her work ‘truly exciting and original’. Emerald calls it ‘Disneyland on crack’.
In April, the spotlight will be firmly on her as she waits to see if her sharp take on consent leads to glory. But whatever happens, she has made history. ‘Even if Emerald doesn’t win, an Oscar nod carries significant power for a young film-maker,’ says Hanna Flint, film critic and Time’s Up UK’S Critics’ Committee co-chair. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already receiving a deluge of offers.’