Emily Blunt has earned her place on Hollywood’s A list, with a flourishing career and the power to pick and choose projects that matter to her. The star of this summer’s most-anticipated film, Oppenheimer, talks to Frances Hedges about motherhood, moving behind the camera and the enduring magic of the big screen
EMILY BLUNT IS APOLOGISING FOR BEING LATE. IT IS ENTIRELY unnecessary – she’s only five minutes behind schedule for our Zoom call, a mere nothing compared with the usual barrage of time and location changes that are par for the course with celebrity interviews – but politeness is one of her most endearingly English traits, as is her sense of humour. ‘I was just talking to a friend last night about our love affair with The Great British Bake Off, ’ she says, laughing. ‘It’s the irreverence of it – you’d never get away with some of the innuendos over here.’
‘Over here’ means in Brooklyn, which has been home for Blunt and her family – her husband, the actor and director John Krasinski, and their two daughters Hazel and Violet, aged nine and seven – since 2016. She has been a sworn-in citizen of the United States for eight years now, and for all the complexities that identity brings, she admits to being ‘seduced by America’s great qualities’. ‘I have to be, right? My husband’s American, my children are American… That’s three of my favourite people in the world.’ A stint living in LA left her pining for London, but in Brooklyn she found the sense of community she had been missing. ‘I feel very at home here,’ she says. ‘It’s like a village within New York, with all the spontaneity combined with the reality of being in a big city.’ So many of her close friends live nearby, she adds, that ‘it’s almost like being on Sesame Street!’
One such friend is Sienna Miller, whom she was photographed embracing on the red carpet at the Met Gala just a few days before we speak. ‘She’s one of the people I cling to, living here,’ says Blunt, who attended the event wearing a Karl Lagerfeld-inspired look custom-made by Michael Kors: sequin-encrusted satin trousers under a matching overskirt and a lace blouse with a black organza bow. ‘I adore fashion,’ she says, before adding unexpectedly, ‘but it’s not really my world. It can be quite an intimidating crowd, and I sometimes feel a bit on the outside of it.’ The gala’s costuming tradition helps put her at ease. ‘I love that everyone there is playing a role, so it becomes less self-reflective and more performative.’
Blunt, after all, is a performer by nature. Her varied roles have included a
