Emily Blunt: “It's A Blood Bath Out There”

Emily Blunt discusses her career, creative conflicts and children, celebrating along the way a reputation that continues to accelerate… even if her current movie is somewhat stuck in transit

- Richard Aldous

THERE’S A CRUEL irony at play that allows the second chapter in Emily Blunt’s A Quiet Place project to coincide with an almost complete shutdown of organised gatherings in the UK—in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. Quiet, indeed.

On March 20, the very night that cinemagoers were preparing to revel in the actress’s latest ascent into the upper echelons of UK movie royalty, so Boris Johnson did give one final tug on cafes, restaurants and pubs— our final flirtations with what might resemble a social life.

Paramount, the film’s distributors, look set to reschedule the film later in the year. As for Blunt, the 37-year-old actress will weather this dalliance as indeed she has before, with the sort of unpredictability that has patterned a career spanning back to 2001, and a professional stage debut in The Royal Family, opposite Dame Judi Dench.

Perhaps the Wandsworth-born star, who is married to director and A Quiet Place co-star John Krasinski, can thank her rather laissez-faire attitude for guiding her through a variety of phases, from rich creative fertility to a few false starts.

“You can’t expect everything to work all of the time,” she begins. “Take anything in life—a relationship, a car, an athlete. So I’m certain you shouldn’t expect an actor to get it right all of the time either.”

“I guess the thing in this industry is to be really honest about why something hasn’t worked, and to try to ensure it’s not a mistake that will be repeated!”