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Emily Blunt Interview - The Young Victoria
Emily Blunt shot to international prominence with her lead role in the multi award-winning British movie, My Summer of Love. Filmed in summer 2003, Emily played the mysterious, privileged Tamsin, who becomes the object of fascination of a local girl in this intoxicating romance from Pawel Pawlikowski. Emily won the Most Promising Newcomer award at the 2004 Evening Standard Film Awards, was nominated in the Best Newcomer category at the 2004 British Independent Film Awards and the film won the Best British Film award at the 2005 BAFTAs.
Emily started her career at the 2002 Chichester Festival, where she played Juliet in a production of “Romeo and Juliet” and her London debut was portraying Gwen Cavendish in a production of “The Royal Family,” opposite Dame Judi Dench. In 2003, her television credits included the British television drama “Boudica,” an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile,” the television series “Foyle’s War” and Peter Travis’s “Henry VIII,” a two-part television drama documenting the stormy 38-year reign of the king. Emily played Henry’s fifth wife, the teenage Queen Catherine Howard. She co-starred with Ray Winstone, Helena Bonham-Carter and Michael Gambon and the series won the Best TV Movie award at the 2003 International Emmys.
The critically-acclaimed Gideon’s Daughter, co-starring Bill Nighy and Miranda Richardson, was shot in October 2004. Emily played Natasha, the troubled daughter of a man who gives the impression of being more dedicated to his career and girlfriend than her. Stephen Poliakoff directed this drama about grief and celebrity, which is set in the intense summer of 1997, charting Labour’s election victory and Princess Diana’s death. The film was broadcast on BBC One in February 2006 and appeared on BBC America in April of the same year. Emily won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in Television at the 2007 Awards for her performance.
In 2005, Emily started work on The Devil Wears Prada. An adaptation of the hugely-popular Lauren Weisberger novel, the film features Emily as the intensely neurotic Emily Charlton, the senior assistant at Runway Magazine who is permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown. David Frankel directed an all-star cast, including Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci and the film opened in June 2006, going on to make $325 million world-wide. Emily was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs for the role. She was also nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 2007 BAFTAs, nominated in the Breakthrough Female category at the 2006 Teen Choice Awards and was honored with the Breakthrough Award at the 2006 Young Hollywood Awards.
Emily moved from New York to Canada in late 2005 to begin work on the spring 2006 release, Wind Chill, produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh and directed by Greg Jacobs. Alongside Ashton Holmes, she plays a fiery, street-smart American college student who gets stranded on a dark and haunted stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. Emily next started work on The Great Buck Howard. Written and directed by Sean McGinly and co-starring Tom Hanks, John Malkovich and Colin Hanks, Emily plays Valerie, a self-assured publicist hired by a luckless magician trying to reinvigorate his career. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival ahead of a spring 2009 release.
Emily’s next release was The Jane Austen Book Club, in which she starred alongside Maria Bello, Frances McDormand, Kevin Zegers and Hugh Dancy as a secretive, unhappy teacher who yearns for more than life has given her. The film was released in the US in September 2007, followed by a UK release in November 2007. Following this Emily was seen in Dan in Real Life, with Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook. It was released in the US in October 2007 and in the UK in January 2008. Later in 2007, Emily was seen in Mike Nicholls’s Charlie Wilson’s War with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Emily spent two months in early 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico filming Sunshine Cleaning. Produced by the team behind Little Miss Sunshine, the film is directed by Christine Jeffs and tells the story of two sisters who start up a successful business cleaning up crime scenes. Emily’s co-stars included Amy Adams and Alan Arkin and the film was Emily’s second at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. It will receive a US release in March 2009.
After working on The Young Victoria, Emily went on to make The Wolfman alongside Anthony Hopkins and Benicio del Toro. Directed by Joe Johnston for Universal Pictures, the film will get a world-wide release in April 2009.
Emily’s most recently completed project is the British black comedy, Wild Target, co-starring Bill Nighy, Rupert Grint, Martin Freeman and Rupert Everett. The film is due for release in 2009.
Q: How did filming The Young Victoria change any preconceptions you had about this legendary monarch?
EB: I had no idea that she was that feisty and strong willed and outgoing and gregarious and all of those things, I mean I read her diaries and I read letters that she wrote and there’s nothing in them that suggests she was any other way. I mean she’d write in italics and with things boldly underlined like she couldn’t emphasise enough. You can hear her voice if you read her diaries and she was very candid about her life there and her life with Albert and having sex with Albert and all of that and it was very interesting to see that side of her. You know she loved the opera, she loved ballet, she loved music and she loved to dance. All of those things make for a very emotional person and she was a very emotional Queen. I think Albert came in with his Teutonic ways and kind of reeled a lot of that in but initially she was an incredibly passionate and emotional person.
Q: What do you think is so special about Victoria and Albert’s relationship?
EB: Albert was Victoria’s greatest achievement in her reign and I think she needed him probably more than he needed her, funnily enough because I think without him this very stubborn, sort of feisty girl would have made some real problems within the country. She already had messed up quite a lot before he showed up, I mean she’d tried to overturn the government, the whole Lady Flora Hastings scandal. She’d made some terrible mistakes and was mistaking stubbornness for strength and he came in and he was a very logical man, so they were like chalk and cheese and they sort of balanced each other out. She brought out in him, laughter and joy and some more emotion and he sort of dampened all of that down with her and just tried to persuade her that she had to think more logically about things. She would attack before thinking about it and he was the polar opposite and so I think they were perfect for each other; they were just this match made in heaven.
Q: Did you find you were able to relate to the character of Victoria?
EB: I think that we can all relate to her because she’s a teenager, she’s in way over her head in a job she’s probably not prepared for. She’s in love. She doesn’t have a good relationship with her mum. I mean, everyone’s been through these things. And it’s about family, and that’s what I loved about the film, that this was not about the Monarchy it was about family. So I can very much relate to that. And when it comes to bringing her to life you can read as much as you want, you can read endless books on her, but you have to make this person a real person.
Q: What first attracted you to the role?
EB: I just loved that you could see this private and this public Victorian and that they were worlds apart and the opportunity to play someone who is a contradiction to people’s preconception of what she was like because everyone knows her as the mourning Queen who was wheeled around in black with a hanky on her head and was kind of demure and repressed and she was just the polar opposite when she was younger and so that was exciting to me, that I could sort of change people’s opinion of what Victoria was like.
Q: What was it like working with Rupert Friend?
EB: Rupert was so perfect for this part and the moment he walked in you just knew he was right. He has that kind of composure and the gravitas that you need for someone like Albert. He’s impeccable as him and just delved into this character so much and has absolutely morphed into this guy.
Q: Director Jean Marc Vallee is of French Canadian origin. Do you think as a non-Brit he had a different approach to the film?
EB: I think it’s good not to have an English director or a European director, I think because he doesn’t hold this period in too much reverence. I think we all have a tendency to do that here and that becomes kind of stuffy and unapproachable and I think people’s perception of that period if they’re British or European or something, is our dream of what we wanted that period to be like, so it has a sort of ethereal and other-worldly quality and I think that Jean-Marc brings this very modern approach to it. He sees that she’s a rebel and that’s what he said to me in the first meeting and I was completely taken aback at first…you know, to describe Queen Victoria as a rebel! And then you realise he’s so right it’s scary.
Q: What sort of impact do you think Brit producer Graham King had on the film?
EB: Graham King is a classy man and he has great taste and I think he really wanted to cast the right people in this, not necessarily the right people for the audience or the box office or the studio’s gain. He was so adamant that this was cast in the way that it deserved to be cast.
Q: You filmed so much of The Young Victoria on location, with many scenes filmed in gorgeous stately homes and castles. Was this quite a welcome change to your usual on set experience?
EB: Everyone hates being in the studio; it’s stuffy and the air’s horrible. You walk out and there are trucks. This is wonderful because you do sort of immerse yourself in this whole world. I mean, we all like to walk in and kind of play it cool and be like ‘yeah it’s a bit plain, isn’t it? Bit plain in here…’ but it’s just overwhelming. These rooms are overwhelming.
The Young Victoria is released on DVD on July 13th. It stars Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada), Rupert Friend (Pride and Prejudice), Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code), Miranda Richardson (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and Jim Broadbent (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
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