TO PUT IT blunty
Emily Blunt is riding high – she is the new Mary Poppins, one half of a Hollywood power couple and her joint project with husband John Krasinski, A Quiet Place ,is raking in awards.
Emily Blunt’s career took off at a dizzying speed. The British-born star was discovered by an agent while she was still at school, and as a result her very first professional stage role was one most seasoned actresses only dream of: she played Judi Dench’s granddaughter in the 2001 West End production of The Royal Family. At 18 years old she had no formal drama training – in fact, she got into acting as a way to overcome a childhood stutter – and Judi Dench quickly became a mentor to her. ‘I was a kid and could have meant nothing to her, but every day after work she invited me to her dressing room,’ Emily recalls. ‘It was crazy to me: I was drinking champagne and pretending I knew what anyone was talking about.’
Judi also showed Emily the kind of actress that she wanted to be. ‘She taught me everything about how to be gracious and graceful, and not take it seriously; she showed me how I wanted to be for the rest of my career.’ Since then Emily has proved her comedic flair in comedies like
The Devil Wears Prada and The Five-Year Engagement, showed off her
singing voice in the musical Into the Woods and expanded into more dramatic territory with films like action thriller Sicario, The Girl on the Train and last year’s hugely successful AQuiet Place. Also last year, Emily reprised the iconic role of dancing and singing supernanny Mary Poppins in Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns .Set 25 years after the events of the original, the sequel has Mary Poppins popping up to help the now adult Jane and Michael Banks with difficulties they’re facing. Director Rob Marshall says Emily was his first and only choice to play the beloved character. The first time he saw her on screen, he recalls: ‘She reminded me immediately of a young Maggie Smith, because of the humour, the acting chops, the vulnerability.’ Emily accepted the role straight away but soon started feeling jittery once she realised what a huge task she’d taken on. When she told a friend about the project, her friend replied, ‘Oof, you’ve got balls of steel!’ Her solution was to trust her instincts and to make Mary her own rather than trying to replicate Julie Andrews’s 1964 incarnation. She chose not to rewatch the film she hadn’t seen since childhood. ‘I knew that it might take the edge off of what my instincts were telling me to do,’ Emily says. ‘Also, I didn’t want to be completely intimidated by the brilliance of [Julie Andrews’s} voice!’ Instead, she took inspiration from the original books by PL Travers, as well as Rosalind Russell’s character in the 1940 comedy His Girl Friday. ‘No one can out-Julie Julie Andrews, so I had to do something that felt organic and representative of what I had taken from the books.’ Emily says her Mary is ‘a bit more eccentric and freakin’ weird. She is incredibly rude, vain and batty – she really made me laugh’.
I am going to share this completely with my husband, John Krasinski, because the entire experience of doing this with you has completely pierced my heart.
In stark contrast to the cheery world of Mary Poppins, Emily’s next project was supernatural horror film A Quiet Place, her first collaboration with husband John Krasinski (famous for his role as Jim on the US version of The Office). When she won the award for best supporting actress at this year’s SAG awards Emily dedicated her win to John, who adorably welled up during her speech. ‘I am going to share this completely with my husband, John Krasinski, because the entire experience of doing this with you has completely pierced my heart,’ she said.
The pair, who have been married since 2010, had previously decided to keep their careers separate but chose to break the rules for A Quiet Place. ‘I had concerns that we might kill each other, just gently throttle the life out of each other during the process.’ But clearly it was worth it: the film was one of the highest-grossing of 2018.
A Quiet Place is about a family trying to keep their children safe in a dystopian world haunted by blind monsters with an acute sense of hearing – John and Emily play the parents. The unique opportunity came about when John was picked up as an actor for the film and was so struck by the concept that he got himself on board as a writer and director. Emily encouraged him to do the project but didn’t see herself in it at that stage. It was only when she read John’s script that she quickly changed her mind.
‘I had this overwhelming feeling of “I don’t want anybody else to play this part”,’ she recalls. ‘I said:
“Would you feel weird if I did the movie with you?” And he broke out into this sort of ecstatic smile. I felt completely sure about it in a way I hadn’t before. It was a film that represented some of my deepest fears – of not being able to protect my children.’
The birth of their two daughters (five-year-old Hazel and two-year-old Violet; the couple love ‘old-lady names’) prompted John and Emily to relocate from sunny LA to Brooklyn, New York. ‘I feel a lot more supported in my quest to create an exciting environment for my girls in Brooklyn,’ she says. ‘Los Angeles, however lovely it was to live in the sunshine – and we have wonderful friends there – was completely alien to what I knew. The idea of creating a world where my daughters can be interesting and interested gives me a sense of great calm that I don’t think I’ve felt before… There’s a tenacity and energy here. There’s a hardiness you need as well to live in New York, simply because of the conditions alone. You gotta have your wits about you. It’s similar to London and how I grew up.’
And they don’t need to fend off the paparazzi. ‘There’s a multicultural, villagey feel: we don’t have a car, we walk everywhere and people are cool – they leave us alone.’
In 2020, Emily will co-star with Dwayne Johnson in adventure film Jungle Cruise and a sequel to A Quiet
Place is on the cards, though we can’t be sure she will be in it as yet. But Emily has a long, exciting career ahead of her. ‘I am always under the impression that I have a silly job,’ Emily says. ‘But occasionally you run into someone who deepens your feeling about your job. You realise that when you are in something that really touches people, it does offer an escape.’