The scene Emily Blunt wants to delete from history: “Cripplingly embarrassing”
Even though actors usually know what they’re getting into when they sign on for a movie because they’ve read the script at least once beforehand, it doesn’t mean they can’t look back and recoil in horror after the fact. For Emily Blunt, one scene left her mortified for several different reasons and on a number of levels.
On the plus side, it came in the early years of her Hollywood career and happened in a movie that few people remember. Even more beneficially, her role wasn’t a major one either, and it’s not unfair to say that out of everyone who appeared in the film, there’s only one performance anybody would be able to recall off the top of their heads, and it wasn’t hers.
After making her feature debut in the 2004 British drama My Summer of Love, Blunt wasted no time cracking America when her sophomore movie, The Devil Wears Prada, became a box office smash hit that doubled as her star-making turn. The next year, she appeared opposite one of Hollywood’s most beloved and popular actors, but the circumstances were somewhat toe-curling.
With a screenplay from Aaron Sorkin, Mike Nichols directing, and Tom Hanks in the title role, it was assumed that 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War was a nailed-on awards season contender. That didn’t turn out to be the case, with the film receiving a muted critical and commercial reception, although Phillip Seymour Hoffman earned a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nod for his turn as Gust Avrakotos.
Blunt’s Jane Liddle was a minor character in the biographical dramedy, and one of her scenes required her to seduce Hanks. ‘America’s Dad’ rarely gets frisky onscreen, and considering his scene partner was over 25 years his junior and had recently worked with – and struck up a friendship – with the actor’s son, Colin, it was supremely awkward for her to cavort around with cinema’s radiant beacon of wholesome positivity.
“Cripplingly embarrassing” was how Blunt described their scene to American Way, but not without praising Hanks for putting her at ease and playing against type. “Crawling all over Tom Hanks in my underwear? He was such a gent. I don’t think he’d ever done that kind of role. He doesn’t play those kinds of characters.”
To make matters worse, Blunt was loaded with the flu at the time, leaving her “sure I infected him with all kinds of horrific germs during the process.” As far as awkward moments go, cavorting around with an actor she’d grown up watching who also happened to be the father of a friend while desperately ill doesn’t sound like a memorable experience, and it’s one she’s best off forgetting all about.
