A PROMISING
When she was seven years old and her mother asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, quick as a shot Emerald Fennell fired back: “Actress.”
But after giving it a few moments’ thought, the young Emerald said: “I want to write stories about murder.”
And it’s that dark ambition which has landed Emerald a place in movie history as the first British woman ever to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar.
Her film Promising Young Woman, an uncomfortable “comic horror thriller” about rape, has five Oscar nominations, with Carey Mulligan up for Best Actress and Emerald, Best Original Screenplay.
Following on from Emerald’s Emmynominated work on the second series of Killing Eve, it seems the dark thoughts which once kept her awake at night and her childhood fascination with murder have led her to this point.
Talking of her childhood, she said: “I read a lot, but didn’t sleep. So I thought about things a lot. About things that would go wrong.
“People climbing in through the window and taking my sister away. Falling down in the middle of the night in the cellar, hurting myself and nobody being able to find me. Mad.
“And then, I suppose, that just developed. I often find that I think horrific things and they come to be unbidden in a weird way.”
Perhaps no surprise that her hobbies now include collecting taxidermy.
Promising Young Woman, about a woman set on revenge for a friend who was raped while drunk at a party, resonates in the wake of #MeToo, protests following the death of Sarah Everard, and revelations about sexual assault and harassment in British schools.
Although jubilant at her nominations, Emerald, 35, says women have had to wait far too long for a turn in the director’s chair and a place on the Oscars shortlist.
She says: “I feel like
I’ve benefited from years and years and years of other people’s work, of other women working tirelessly for years and decades so that someone like me can get my film financed.
“It’s amazing, but I also wish it had happened sooner for all of those people.
“I think we were probably all surprised, naively, that these things are so unusual because in my life, I’ve always worked with so many incredibly talented women – they’re show-running, they’re writing, they’re directing.
“And I suppose you forget that actually, we still have a long way to go.
“I think it just takes a while to turn around a big ship, but it does feel like things are changing.”
The older of two daughters, Emerald’s father is jeweller Theo Fennell, whose customers have included the Beckhams, Madonna and family friend Elton John.
Her mum is author Louise Fennell, and her sister Coco is a fashion designer whose clothes have been worn by Rita Ora and Daisy Lowe.
Educated at Marlborough College, the same boarding school as Kate, Duchess
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of Cambridge, she refused to fit the jolly hockey sticks mould. During hated PE lessons a teenage Emerald was ordered by exasperated teachers to stand alone and bounce a tennis ball against a wall.
Her 18th birthday was covered by Tatler, and after a gap year in Paris, where she met her partner, the film and advertising director Chris Vernon, she went to Oxford to study English.
It was there that she was spotted in a play by Keira Knightley’s agent.
Emerald recalls: “I was playing a