by Gill Pringle in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
There’s a reason why Emily Blunt is everyone’s favourite co-star, famously forging lasting friendships with her on-screen partners including Matt Damon, Meryl Streep and Cillian Murphy.
“It’s been such a beautiful experience for me over the years, the friendships I’ve made, the impact that these actors have had on me, whether I’m their friend for life, or I’m just absorbing the brilliance of what they’re doing, it’s always been the community that I’ve loved most,” says the British actress.
“I do not see this as an individualistic experience. I don’t receive it that way. I love to have fun. I am not a method actor. I really need to be in a joyful environment. I also love people. I love all kinds of people. I love all their weird idiosyncrasies. I love your tricky people. I love all of them. It’s just that fresh injection of different personalities all the time, and how do you work with that person? And that chemistry changes every time, and then it can show up in different ways on screen. I love it,” she enthuses while attending the Red Sea International Film festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was honoured with a special award for her screen work.
Not that she’s looking for an easy life with her roles. “Everything’s a discovery. Every day should feel like you’re putting your feet to the fire in some way. It doesn’t matter the genre. It could be a popcorn movie, or it could be something like Oppenheimer. It could be the full spectrum, like the full weather system could happen in any one scene.
“The key for me is that you’ve got to work with people who collaborate. If you have someone who just rules with an iron fist – whether it’s another actor or a director – it can get hard. It can get tricky. You need someone who’s flexible, open, interested, generous and interested in what you might bring. The best work comes from actors who aren’t straight-jacketed by some preconceived idea or by an intimidating atmosphere.”
One of Blunt’s more recent favourite collaborators would be Dwayne Johnson, with whom she starred in Disney action comedy, Jungle Cruise; re-teaming for something very dark and different next year.
Co-starring in Benny Safdie’s highly anticipated biopic The Smashing Machine, Johnson portrays real-life mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Mark Kerr.
“Dwayne is absolutely one of my favourites. He’s just heaven, and we’re best buds. I love him so much, and we had the best time on Jungle Cruise. We knew we wanted to do something else together. I just don’t think either of us knew it would be such a departure, like The Smashing Machine, which I can’t wait for you to see,” says the actress who plays Kerr’s now ex-wife, Dawn Staples.
“Benny is a very cool, eclectic, exciting visual director. And for Dwayne, he is someone who – not only because of his Colossus size – but just who he is, has never really been allowed to disappear.
“He is unrecognisable in this. It’s an incredibly intense film, centred around the life of Mark Kerr, all of his struggles with addiction and his relationships. It was an incredibly immersive, intense, emotional experience, and he’s extraordinary in it. I’m so excited for people to see him like this,” she says of Johnson’s performance as Kerr whose nickname, The Smashing Machine, stems from his aggressive in-ring fighting style.
Discussing her chemistry with various co-stars, Blunt says, “Because you have trust with someone, it just allows the scenes to take flight, and there’s a sort of secret language. I feel that with Matt,” she says of Damon with whom she co-starred in The Adjustment Bureau and Oppenheimer.
“I definitely felt that with Dwayne because it was just so easy, even though the scenes [in The Smashing Machine] were incredibly hardcore and intense and very difficult to get over some of them. But I think because we had each other and someone like Benny, who is so positive, and effervescent as a person, it allowed us to kind of sail through the struggles of shooting some of those scenes,” she recalls.
She became fast friends with Cillian Murphy after portraying his wife Kitty in the Oscar-winning film. “If there’s one face you need to put an IMAX camera on – it’s his,” she says. “He’s very unique and incredibly, such a quiet force as an actor and a gem. He is one of my favourites. He’s a true friend. I hope we’re in each other’s lives forever. He’s become a true friend and his amazing wife, Yvonne… I don’t know how he shouldered the colossal weight of Oppenheimer on his then very frail shoulders, because he became so emaciated for the role.
“And oh, my God, if anyone is not made to be famous, it’s Cillian. He is like the last person who should be famous. He’s so crap at it. He is so bad,” she laughs about the notoriously shy Irish actor.
Of course, one of Blunt’s favourite collaborators would have to be her husband John Krasinski on hit horror movie, A Quiet Place. Written and directed by Krasinksi, the couple also co-starred in the film which spawned two sequels.
Interestingly, she initially vetoed the idea of appearing in the film. “I mean, honestly, I’d just had a baby, and I knew I was going off to do Mary Poppins. And also, I was a little nervous to work with him.
“You hear horror stories about married couples working together, so I didn’t know if it would be a good move. And then I read this extraordinary script, and I’d already suggested a friend of mine for it, and I said to John, ‘you have to call her and tell her that I want to do it!’”
Fortunately, Blunt’s friend was understanding. “She was great about it, but that’s what friends are for. He sort of, like, kind of brought it up to her, and she laughed, actually, when he said, ‘To be honest, Emily’s like, desperate to do it now’,” she recalls.
Ask what attracted her to A Quiet Place – having never previously expressed any desire to make a horror film – she says, “It was just an amazing world, and one of the most rare horror stories, and I don’t watch horror films very much, but it was so rare, and it was just such an amazing idea, like so simple, which is often also what you look for in a film. Like, the idea that the whole audience would just wrap their arms around: If you make noise, you die. That’s it. And it was so simple. I was like, how has this not been done before? And then I think just the world he built out around it was amazing. I just saw that he had this completely clear vision for it, and that was comforting. But I don’t think he even knew what he was capable of as a director before that film. I think he didn’t quite know the visual language abilities he had,” she says, going on to describe her husband’s interesting work process.
“John is one of these people who could write for eight hours without stopping, and just puts his headphones on and listens to one song over and over again and writes and doesn’t eat although I leave a little food out for him.
“But he thinks about it for weeks and weeks, storyboards it and plans it, and then he writes it in like a week. That’s now a very big part of our household. He’s often in a cave, typing away,” she says of the former Office star.
Surely one of Blunt’s most popular films was The Devil Wears Prada, proving herself as a consummate character actress with her portrayal of a permanently-dieting assistant to Meryl Streep’s haughty priestess of high fashion.
When she thinks of her Prada co-stars – Streep, Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci – the word ‘family’ pops into mind. “Well, you know, Stanley Tucci is my brother-in-law. He’s now family – that’s what the movie means to me. He is a wonderful cook as well and cooks fantastic Christmas dinners,” she says of Tucci, who is married to her older sister, literary agent Felicity Blunt.
“He is the dream brother-in-law. I just adore everything about him and my little nephew and niece, and my other nephew and nieces from his first relationship, there’s just been so much joy that’s come out of The Devil Wears Prada.
“I’ve done three movies with Meryl now, but that was the starting point. And we are a family – we know we made something special. We are bonded for life, whether we like it or not, forever.”
Prada is so beloved that fans have never stopped clamouring for a sequel. “There are rumblings, there’s stuff churning around but I don’t know if I can confirm anything completely, but I think we would all be pretty delighted to work together again,” she teases.
