BLUNT ON FEAR,
Blunt connects with fear in film co-starring husband Krasinski
NEW YORK — As a mother, Emily Blunt knew she could all too easily connect with her besieged parent in the horror thriller “A Quiet Place” (opening Friday).
“A Quiet Place,” directed by, co-written by and costarring her husband, John Krasinski (“The Office”), has an ingenious premise: Blind aliens now rule, and if they hear you, they kill you.
To survive, the parents and their children must communicate by sign language and never, ever break silence.
Blunt and Krasinski, together almost 10 years, have two daughters, ages 4 and almost 2.
“I would say that `personal' is the word I use to describe my experience on this film,” said Blunt, 35. “It was so intimate, very close to home.
“I normally enjoy playing characters dissimilar to me, but I connected with this character so profoundly and immediately — and I really admired her ability. I was also intimidated to take it on because, really, what she experienced — on a much more magnificent scale — are my deepest fears as a mother. As everyone who has children can attest to, that idea of not being able to protect your children from a rather brutal environment is something that keeps me up at night. I would not do well in `A Quiet Place,' personally.”
Best known for “The Devil Wears Prada” and “The Girl on the Train,” Blunt laughed when asked if she and her Newton native mate plan to be the 21st century version of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
“We're going to play raging alcoholics!” she said, laughing. “We've always been quite protective of each other, a secondhand support system for each other, during each other's roles.
“It was important to find something that could transcend the fact that we were a married couple. I just never wanted that to be the story of the film that we worked on together.
“This was super-exciting because the concept was so incredible. In this situation, it helped us enormously that we were a married couple because the audience could buy us as that immediately.
“We do have a kind of secret language. But (the film) was a bit daunting to take on because we'd never worked together before.
“We had people joking, `You're going to be divorced by the end!' But it was actually kind of amazing. We really creatively aligned ourselves. I would do it again, for sure.”