By Gill Pringle
“Yeah, Emily Blunt was always my first choice,” The Girl On The Train director, Tate Taylor, tells FilmInk. “It was always Hayley Bennett too. All my movies are that way. I don’t see a lot of people. I figure out who I want, and then I stalk them,” he laughs.
There was, however, someone else who tried to hitch a ride on the film. One of Tate Taylor’s favourite actresses is the gifted Octavia Spencer – she starred in the director’s films, Pretty Ugly People and Get On Up, and won an Oscar for Taylor’s breakthrough 2011 hit, The Help – and she worked hard to find a role for herself. “You’re going to laugh,” Taylor smiles. “Allison Janney is in everything that I do – she plays the detective in The Girl On The Train – and so is Octavia. So I was like, ‘Octavia, there’s nothing that you can do in the film.’ And she was like, ‘What if I was the ticket taker?’ And she was really serious. ‘No, no I got to be!’ And I was like, ‘Octavia, you will totally derail the movie if you have a conductor hat on and you’re punching tickets.’ Unfortunately, there was just no spot for her.”
As it turns out, Tate Taylor’s Oscar winning box office hit, The Help, hasn’t had much to do with the director booking the plum gig of the director of The Girl On The Train. It’s not even mentioned in the film’s marketing materials, and you won’t see the words, “From the director of The Help”, on any of the posters for The Girl On The Train. “No,” Taylor laughs, “I don’t think that would help with getting people to go.”
The Girl On The Train is released in cinemas on October 6. For our interview with Emily Blunt, click here.
