“For me, when you’re doing a high-octane emotional scene, I can’t plan them out, so I don’t rehearse them.” – Emily Blunt
Actress Emily Blunt has reached an age when most actresses unfortunately don’t get offered substantive roles. Because of that, Blunt was thrilled when she was offered the lead role in The Girl on the Train, which is based on the bestselling novel. Speaking with the Huffington Post, Blunt spoke about what it was like to play an erratic, alcoholic murder suspect and the most intense scene that she had to film.
Blunt admits that she was primarily interested in the role because it offered her something different, that it as unsettling at first. She explains, “It was such an alien skin to wear for a while. I’ve never played somebody as tortured as this. What a challenge to play somebody in the grips of an addiction but also somebody who’s afraid of themselves, and you’ve got the heightened environment with a potential murder. That combination is like a real character piece with the combination of a thriller, so it’s really unusual. It is a rarity in Hollywood to have a mainstream film with such a flawed character, especially the female character.”
One particular scene that stands out is when Rachel is yelling at herself in the mirror. Blunt says that she didn’t rehearse the scene because she wanted to act out her rage. She reveals, “Well, that was one of those scenes that stuck out in the script. I’m sure a lot of people were nervous about it because it’s a big moment, and it’s sort of the pinnacle of her rage and pinnacle of her drinking problem [that are] evident in that scene. For me, when you’re doing a high-octane emotional scene, I can’t plan them out, so I don’t rehearse them. I don’t quite know what’s going to happen, and I can only describe it as you sort of go somewhere else. I said to [director Tate Taylor], ‘Is it OK if I don’t walk it through? I don’t quite know what I’m going to do,’ and he said, ‘Great.’ We just rolled, and we did three takes of it. And it was just wonderful and spontaneous. Yeah, it was a very intense scene to shoot.”
