The “nightmare” 2016 role Emily Blunt couldn’t wait to be over: “I’ve never been more scared”
Fear is an essential part of being an actor, because what’s the point in accepting a role if you know it’s going to be easy? It was a lesson Emily Blunt learned the hard way, though, and it’s still enough to have her waking up in a cold sweat.
Having displayed both her effortless star power and acting chops in the sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow, the camp musical, Into the Woods, and Denis Villeneuve’s gritty Sicario in 2014 and 2015, it was clear that Blunt’s star would only continue to rise, but it wasn’t without incident.
Her 2016 didn’t get off to the best start when the terrible big-budget fantasy sequel The Huntsman: Winter’s War bombed, but you can forgive Blunt for that when she admitted she was only lured to the role of Queen Freya so she could ham it up, and presumably the sizeable paycheque, too.
The Academy Award nominee’s second release of the year, The Girl on the Train, fared much better, with Blunt earning rave reviews for a performance in an admittedly silly thriller that recouped its budget more than three times over at the box office. Unfortunately, that’s where the fear factor comes in.
To promote Tate Taylor’s literary adaptation, she did something she’s never done before, something that’s on the to-do list of most big-name actors, and something it seems very unlikely she’ll ever do again, based on her recollections: hosting Saturday Night Live.
On October 15th, 2016, a week after The Girl on the Train premiered in cinemas, Blunt headed to Studio 8H alongside musical guest Bruno Mars. She was a game host, but not everybody is cut out for hosting SNL, no matter how good they are at their day job, and the star found that out the hard way.
“I’ve never been more scared in my life,” Blunt confessed several years after the fact. “I get anxiety just thinking about it.” That, and the way she described the experience of fronting SNL, means it’s not at all surprising that ten years have passed without her ever returning for a second go-around.
While she was at pains to point out that she didn’t need it, she nonetheless completely understood why there’s a bucket kept in the wings specifically for people to throw up in. “I mean, I didn’t puke in it, but it’s there,” Blunt clarified. “It was just this completely alternate reality.”
The nerves were overwhelming, to say the least, and even though it should be a distant memory, it’s anything but. “Honestly, it’s like a nightmare,” she added. “The thought of it now, it makes me sweat.” Maybe she’s been invited back, maybe she hasn’t, but from the sound of things, Blunt would need an awful lot of convincing to even consider hosting SNL again.
