Emily Blunt on looking for the struggle in her characters

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:13it's the treatment welcome to the show i'm elvis mitchell i first saw my guest ride into a movie on a white horse wearing a pair of red cowboy boots in the film my summer of love in which she said yeah i guess i'm kind of a bad influence since then we've seen emily Blunt play a supernatural nanny, be a very, very, very quiet expectant mother, try to hold their own against a really imperious sort of vogue head. And she's now working again with her old friend Dwayne Johnson in the film Smashing Machine. First of all, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

0:49I'm very honored. I thought about that performance in my summer of love and watching Smashing Machine. Really? Because there's a kind of a bored cunning that both of these women have. because there's kind of a lack of sort of self-awareness and self-development. They feel it their most when other people are reacting to them. And just, again, that entrance on that horse. I mean, you have to tell me about that. Is that your first film? It was my first film. I was 20. And I think it really informed so much going forward. It was the great Pavel Pawlikowski directed it, and he did Ida and all these wonderful films.

1:25But he works in such a spontaneous way, and everything was improvised, which was terrifying. Including that last thing you had with Patti Conten. Yes. Oh my gosh. Everything. And even my audition for it was a completely improvisational thing where he wanted me to look out the window and pretend I saw my dad having sex with his secretary and he wanted me to cry and laugh and then pretend it was a joke. I was so overwhelmed because I come from theater and I'd done a bit of British television, which is so conformed and you know straight jacketed and on a clock yes yes and you've got to just learn your lines have it down and race and this was very new but it was like the I guess it was the drama school that I never had because I didn't train and I feel like Pavel it became emblematic that whole process of how I like to work going forward and I want to look for work that is ambiguous and challenging.

2:28Well, your characters show fear and not quite sure what to do with that fear. I mean, because I think about that so often those fights that your characters have in Smashing Machine took you right back to that movie. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, completely, because I think, I don't know if we felt tramlines ever. The guardrails were off and it was very scripted, but then Benny will let you... Benny Safdie, your director. Benny Safdie will let you kind of go wild and you can overlap, you can yell at each other. It can be so present and visceral and un-technical. It's interesting too because there is this kind of awareness, of lack of awareness that these characters have.

3:09These characters who clearly something traumatic has happened to them at an early age and they're kind of arrested. We can see the arrested development. When Dwayne was here talking about it, he said watching the two of you guys fight, it was like watching teenagers fight. Completely. He would just say, you're rude. That was his arsenal. You're not being nice. You know, it's the way they communicated was like they were drowning and drowning for the loss of sort of they could never find the words to eloquently move through anything. They both said communication was a huge problem for them. And they liked to fight.

3:43It was part of the addiction. But you played a number of characters who liked to fight. Who else? Oh, shall we go? Maybe Kitty Oppenheimer. She was tasty for a fight. That's what we say in England when you want to have a fight. Oh, she was, again, that sort of bored insolence. Yeah. Well, she went crazy at the ironing board. You know, Kitty Oppenheimer was never meant to be a mother and a nurturer. She was meant to be a scientist. So I think I had a lot of empathy for that character. And I have a lot of empathy for Dawn when your entire sense of self is tied up in your husband or your partner.

4:17and I think in Smashing Machine if you are married to a very dedicated athlete your job is to get in line with whatever they need to move forward and she just simply wasn't the person to get in line ever so many of your characters you define them by their shoes there's nothing sensible about the shoes she's wearing the discomfort these shoes are causing her something she's going to visit on somebody else and when she folds her arms and doesn't speak, when she's really waiting for the temperature of the room to go up so she can then just... Launch. Yes. It's a really interesting performance to watch because...

4:57And this thing I find really interesting about you, you have a way of playing fear without commenting on the character's fear and not letting us in on it, which is really interesting to me. Thank you. I'm glad. I'm interested in everybody's suppressed truths. I'm interested in how we as human beings try to submarine what we're really feeling. And I think people can be a myriad of different things within a moment. So I really like characters that are more untidy, I guess, harder to label, harder for me to name and to label. I'm interested in the full weather system of these women and then how to kind of submarine it.

5:48We're talking emotional meteorology with my guest Emily Blunt. Exactly. She's starring in Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson, directed by Mr. Safdie, of course, Betty Safdie. It's the treatment. But she was in costume. I mean, it's weird because he wants everything to be backstage and she wants everything to be on stage. For sure, for sure. I think that was the front foot, was this appearance of glamour and invincibility, but I found her one of the more fragile people I've played. But I think so many of these characters you play are fragile and kind of trying to figure out how much of that fragility they can show.

6:22I mean, again, my mind went racing back to my summer of love, just again that big last fight where she's baiting him and baiting him. And then he grabs her. It's terrifying. She grabs her, then the look on her face after the fight is over. Yeah. where she's not sure she's proud of what she's accomplished. But she knows she's accomplished something. Well, she thinks she's broken him, you know, and she wanted to break him. And I see why you're drawing those correlations, because I think Dawn enjoyed goading him. And if she got a reaction out of him, that meant he connected to her. So when he was unreachable, it was terrifying to her when he was focused.

7:00So she would do everything she could to kind of poke the bear. And I think the Tamsin character in My Summer of Love was manipulative, but she was so frozen in insecurity that the bravado is really, it's really just a front. I think also, too, the thing that I say Pavel has in common with Benny is that the camera feels almost like it's a voyeur in those scenes. Like it's intruding. Yeah. Yeah, and that sort of, that helps. I shouldn't say help, that's not the word I mean, but the audience is kind of white-knuckling too and watching these scenes that are a little too intimate. Well, we kind of shouldn't be watching them.

7:38And I loved that about both those films. And Benny used a lot of long lenses, so it meant the cameras were far back. And you could see the kind of blur of the doorframe coming in and out of shot. And it kind of makes the audience lean in to try to get around the door. I think it has this effect of pulling people in and I know in a Q &A that Chris Nolan and Benny did Chris was like it's almost antithetical to what I think as a filmmaker you should be doing which is getting close in on someone if you want to pull people into you and he goes but I learned so much just watching this process it makes people lean in because they can't quite see and they're wanting to see more and for us as actors it was amazing to not really feel a camera in your face ever I didn't see a light I don't remember technical things around us see I actually think about these performances you do in these films where the camera's moving a lot where there's not a formal frame you're just talking about a quiet place and it's directed whoever that might be somebody who's too good to do the show obviously anymore but um that same kind of framing where the camera will feel like we're intruding on this.

8:49Yeah. Because it's such a personal story. And a lot of these performances of yours almost feel like a character's sort of, they're journal entries. And we can feel a distance between what we should think of these characters and what these characters think of themselves. I was just saying, you don't judge them. And those moments of fear, I mean, as an actor, you really, you can almost feel your delight in feeling the situation be out of control, can't we? I think so. I mean, I think struggle is such an interesting thing to play and to explore. And for me, if I can play people, I've no care as to whether they're likable or not.

9:32if I understand them, I might not like how they are, but if I understand them and if I can expose them on a human level, that is interesting to me. And I think fear is something everybody contends with, you know. We'll take a break and talk more about fear with my guest, Emily Blunt. See, I'm so afraid I can't get your name right. Emily Blunt is my guest. See, I can say Blunt. It's actually, it's both a verb and a name. It is. It is. We'll take a break and talk more about verbs and fear after this. It's The Treatment. Stay with us.

10:10It's The Treatment. My guest who's swallowing, even as we speak, hopefully not her fear, is Emily Blunt. See? Yeah, you got it now. No LR substitution there. It's The Treatment. We're talking about a number of things, including a new film, The Smashing Machine. I want to ask you about making these characters, giving them all a visual stamp. because they all have that. That's the fun of watching all these things to get ready for. Oh, not only that, but we're aware of the way they walk into films. Like your awareness in Edge of Tomorrow that you're both a character and the audience surrogate. Yeah, yes.

10:41Which is a really tough thing to do, by the way, because if ever a performance could come with quotation marks around it, that's one, but it doesn't. And the Mary Pop's just sort of watching, looking at how exaggerated the shoulders are, and the sleeves are a little shorter than they should be. Because it's like in the very sort of British way, look at the tailoring. I'm here to be seen. That's right. She wanted to look immaculate. And the character in Edge, you know, is like there's something about the fact that she's weighed down in armor. She's sort of caged by it. And such an amazing character, you know, because you could say on the surface, like my least favorite, one of my least favorite words is badass, you know, but actually it's so limiting because then you just have to like walk around being tough and saying tough things and always having the answers.

11:29I think the cracks in that armor that kind of caged her was really exciting for me to play and to work with Tom, who's just, I don't know if anyone does Unhinged better than Tom Cruise, I think. Even though, of course, we love seeing him as like the kind of earnest action hero, but I want to see Tom completely unravel because it makes me laugh so much. And that's why he's so brilliant in Edge because he's a coward in it and he's brilliant at it and just watching all these things the costume and what that says about somebody yeah i wanted to ask one that became such a big thing for you because we're so aware of what your characters were i mean going for your first time working with duane yeah we're literally of how coarse it is she is she is i mean and i think from the very beginning I've always been interested in the physical aspects.

12:21It will be a way in. It will be a way into someone, how they walk, how they move, how they hold something. And, you know, with Dawn Staples and Smashing, the nails, the hair, the tan, the wonder bra. I mean, it all kind of makes you. But she makes sure you see all the time. You got to see her. And it's so overt and so distracting. And I think on Summer of Love, I did feel it in that wonderful, hot, bohemian summer. Like, what would she wear to look as exotic as possible? Obviously, in Devil Wears Prada, that was a huge introduction to fashion for me. I really knew nothing about fashion until that moment.

12:57But, you know, that's a very... We won't talk about what you were wondering since this is radio. But I'll say even wearing a pair of white jeans on a horse, that's a decision. It's a decision. Because the horses aren't going to help you stay, you know, tidy. No. So it's like, this is somebody with an eye for drama. Yeah. And you've often given us characters like that. I think about, you know, your scenes with Tom Hanks. All the Toms. Oh, my God. I got all the Toms. I know. Yeah, I do love playing those women, I guess. Yeah. Again, she turns her boredom into an affect. Yeah. Yeah, I think those characters do pull me in.

13:37To the physical aspects and the clothes and the need to transform. I know for me the shape-shifting is a big pull you know I need to feel really kind of kidnapped into someone's world and that will encompass sort of everything about them I think because I grew up as a kid who was slightly frozen in my body because I started so chronically as a child I think it really became important to me to from a young age I would do voices I do bits I pretend to be someone else because I spoke fluently. And I'm really curious about this, about neurologically, because it is a neurological condition. If you're born with a stutter, it runs very prominently in my family.

14:21And still to this day, if I get very stressed or tired, I will stutter. And certain words are tricky for me. Weirdly, the word director can trip me up sometimes, which is not great. Having watched all of the stuff to get ready for this, are we playing moments of watching your character sort of pause and that sort of glint of something in the eye? I think I struggled as a kid. I understand struggle very much. I have a lot of empathy for it, even with tricky characters that I play, even with characters who aren't always nice. If they struggle, I understand it. And if you've been humiliated as a kid, you will never humiliate anybody.

14:58That part, I think, really is a reason maybe why you read that fear or the vulnerability is that I did feel that way as a kid. I for sure did. But I did find an escape in other voices, other people, other ways. And I'm curious about it. And I've spoken to my whole team on the stuttering team that I work with. You know, we raise a lot of money for kids to get treatment and adults to get treatment. And I said, neurologically, I'm interested to explore this. Why a lot of actors who stutter speak fluently on screen. from Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel. I mean, all these stutters. Bill Withers was a stutter.

15:41There you go. That I think synaptically something happens when you're being creative. And so you and me talking, maybe we're just accessing ABCD of our brains. But maybe when you're creative, maybe when you step outside of yourself, you bypass it and you're in a different part of your brain that stops the record skipping. I'm just really curious about it. Why stutterers, you know James Earl Jones one of those famous voices in history it's like why does he speak fluently when he's in character it's the treatment I guess only has to go to the letter d in the alphabet that's it that's all I can do that's all I ever ask of anybody yeah we go four letters in my job here is done exactly talking about a number of things including her new film the smashing machine uh my guest is Emily Blunt see I can keep doing this I can't get your name right But I think what you're talking about is what kind of possession is where it takes place, where clarity comes into play.

16:37I think that's a great way of putting it. Do you say when you take possession of something or do you mean you are yourself possessed by something? Both. I mean, but when you're possessed by it. You know, it's that great line somebody once had about Al Green that he swallowed an angel and it's more than he can contain. Oh, my God. What a beautiful thing to say about him. But it's also, I think what you're talking about, and so many performers I've spoken to talk about that moment when you realize that this thing is bigger than you. Yeah. And it's not a matter of trying to harness it, but just being enveloped in it.

17:10Yeah. And I also would ask you, too, if you feel that gives you a point of concentration as you're doing all of that. Yeah. It is that the world goes away completely. completely there's an elsewhereness to it that I have become very addicted to I think that it is that feeling of any part of you or any part of your normal life will become like white noise in that moment and I think it is in many ways the truest like a very intense form of empathy you know acting if you can really walk in someone else's shoes it is very freeing from yourself you know One of the things that Aretha's about you, now I know what to append it, is you have this almost musical pause that you do.

17:58We're waiting and there's a part of us that's an audience going, when is this person going to speak? Really? Yes. Do you know what I've also been told? So this is maybe an interesting thing, that I'm a very performative listener. You know, so if someone's telling me something, I'll go, no, stop it. Are you serious? And I'll have to engage. I can't bear people not thinking I'm engaged with what they're saying. Well, thanks for finally doing it now, half hour into this conversation. Well, it's because we're on a radio thing. You see all the technical stuff around us. And maybe that's why I'm pausing.

18:31So much of this performance, even though it's about two people out of control, who are codependent, who push each other, so much of this performance, this film, in fact, is about the trust that you two have in each other and the trust you also have in your director. because the thing that really sort of keyed me into the performance is that moment at the beginning when he loses the decision, he has to fight, then he walks through the backstage area, he walks through the staging area where the wrestlers are, he walks down a hallway, he gets on the elevator, he wants to let go, and then the caterers get on, he's alone for another couple of minutes, and the door is open, he walks through the hallway.

19:10All real time. Yeah, there was no need to sort of propulsively move through that. I think Benny knew that that would be suffocating to watch. But for me, that moment for you is that when you're in Japan and you go from being coercive to then... Holding him. Yes, I've done the wrong thing. That was that moment. That's so much about trust. Yeah. You're trusting each other as actors. And I think a lot of his performance comes from his trust, the trust that he has in you. Well, I wouldn't want to take credit for it because I think, you know, truly, I think what we offered was a safety net and that he knew I'd catch him and I knew he'd catch me and we know each other well and we're pals and I trust him and respect him.

19:59I don't think he quite knew the wingspan of what he was capable of you know so I think every day seemed like a discovery for DJ it was so beautiful to watch but I do feel even when he walked in as Mark for the first time in the camera test for me the thing I remember of course there was the shape shift and you saw him as this other person but he looked so relieved not to be the rock and it was so moving well we're probably way more than out of time so i will thank emily blunt to see i got the right consonant there the years of rehearsal i can get this right her newest film as actor is the smashing machine you welcome back here by the way anytime you want to come back i would love to this has been so lovely

20:48She's worked with iconic actors such as Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise, as well as played iconic characters such as in Mary Poppins Returns and the real-life Katherine Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer, for which she received an Oscar nomination. Emily Blunt is now playing an iconic real-life figure and co-starring with the iconic Dwayne Johnson in the biopic The Smashing Machine, for which she has received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Conversations with, yes, icons from all fields of creativity, such as Smashing Machine co-star and fellow Golden Globe nominee Dwayne Johnson, they can be found at kcrw.com slash thetreatment.

21:35And while you're there, check out kcrw.com slash the treat. You'll find Emily Blunt's fellow icon and Oscar-winning star of Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy, talking about being inspired by his favorite band. The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. To better days, everyone. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.