The 2010 movie Emily Blunt couldn’t stand making: “Really tedious and confusing”
Whenever a relatively unknown actor lands the breakthrough role that launches them up the career ladder, it’s only a matter of time before they end up in a blockbuster, but Emily Blunt did at least manage to resist the urge for a few years.
The same year she cracked America with The Devil Wears Prada, Blunt inadvertently enjoyed a two-for-one special when the BBC drama Gideon’s Daughter, which premiered four months before her Golden Globe-nominated star-maker in David Frankel’s smash hit, went one better.
You know it’s the biggest year in someone’s fledgling career when they’re shortlisted for two major awards in the same year, and the combination of The Devil Wears Prada and a Globe win for ‘Best Supporting Actress – Television’ for her TV tilt put her firmly on the map, which comes with its own set of perils.
For a while, 2007’s Wind Chill not included, Blunt prioritised characters and collaborators over easy money, working with Tom Hanks on Charlie Wilson’s War, Amy Adams and Alan Arkin in Sunshine Cleaning, and delivering another knockout turn in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Young Victoria. Eventually, though, the lure of CGI nonsense became irresistible. Either that, or the pay packets were too good to turn down.
In 2010, she made her big-budget debut, and it couldn’t have gone much worse. First out of the starting blocks was The Wolfman, which endured a nightmarish production beset by studio interference, hirings, and firings, and when all was said and done, all she had to show for it was a massive flop, and one of the worst films ever to win an Academy Award. And yet, things quickly got much, much worse.
Ten months later, Gulliver’s Travels limped into cinemas. In Blunt’s defence, it was a film that she never wanted to be a part of, but since she’d signed a multi-picture contract with 20th Century Fox for The Devil Wears Prada, the boardroom flexed its muscles, ruled her out of the role in Iron Man 2 that was ultimately played and filled for a decade by Scarlett Johansson, and forced her to co-star with Jack Black instead.
Actors are savvy enough to know when they’ve made a bad movie, but they still have to convince people to see it on the big screen, which means they’ll gladly lie through their teeth and say it’s an incredible work of motion picture magic, until the penny drops on opening weekend and everyone realises it’s crap.
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The 1994 sci-fi movie that refused to cast Marlon Brando: “Not going to justify the expenditure”
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Not Blunt, though, because when she was asked for her thoughts on working on the effects-loaded adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s novel, she didn’t even try to hide her disdain. “It is hell,” was how she matter-of-factly put it. “I find it really tedious and confusing. You’re, like, begging a tennis ball on a pole for help and crying.”
That’s how she surmised her Gulliver’s Travels experience before it had even premiered in cinemas, and to the shock of absolutely nobody, her stance hasn’t softened over time. In fact, she’d rather pretend the movie doesn’t exist at all.
