INTERVIEW: Unleashing Emily Blunt’s Inner Beast!

Fun and very talented actress Emily Blunt, whom you first might have seen playing an irritated fashionista opposite Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, has gone “Victorian” this year appearing first as the young queen in The Young Victoria and now as The Wolfman’s love.

Sitting down with Emily in L.A. again (we talked with her for “Young Victoria”), we find that she is still very candid and warm. She let us know what it’s like to play love and lust way back in uptight, repressed Victorian days, how she feels about constantly being in corsets lately, what would bring out her “inner beast” and her difficult days on set doing action in bulky costumes and reacting to well… a werewolf!

How was it working with Benicio del Toro as Lawrence/the werewolf? He just seems really intense. Was he scary?

Emily: It was intense. No. He's awesome to work with. He's really exciting to work with because he's quite raw and instinctual. So you don't really know what he will do in the scene. And the scene can dance and shape shift in some way.

He’s a great guy. We had a laugh on the movie. He's a lot of fun. He's a big teddy bear. People don't know that.

What scene or scenes were the most challenging or difficult for you to do?

Emily: I really found the action scenes in those clothes, really tricky. I mean there was one point during the scene where the Wolfman jumps on me and Hugo (Weaving) and I have to get up, he actually yanked my entire skirt down as I was trying to get up. So that was probably the hardest kind of stuff we had to do. I think it's a combination of that and all the physical parts of those costumes and how restricted they are.

Are you stuck now in movies where you have to wear a corset?

Emily: I don't know why I managed to go from one corset to another. It was not my intention. But I actually love the physical elements of creating a part. And once you've got the costumes on, there so ethereal and alien.

And they feel so strange when you first put them on that you almost don't have to do anything. You don't have to worry about moving differently or standing differently because it does everything for you.

So I find the costumes quite transporting and particularly if they are as beautiful as the ones I've gotten to wear. Milena Canonero designed beautiful, exquisite costumes for this film. And very creative in that she incorporated a lot of kind of animal materials into them. Furs, feathers. It was really cool.

But I also like to wear jeans and a t-shirt because then you're really free.

Which scenes were the most emotionally difficult?

Emily: And I think trying to get that relationship, the love story right, without it appearing that she's callous. And I think how do you really react to a werewolf? What would you really do if you came across a werewolf, if you were confronted by one? I think that was also something where you have to really use your imagination.

I don't have anything to draw from. I've never seen one. I don't know anyone who's ever seen one. So, I think I would ask people that I knew who had ever been in life threatening situations like, 'What happened? What did you do?' And they all kind of said the same thing. They either fainted or they said nothing. That, literally their vocal chords locked out, (they were) so frightened.

How did you deal with all the sexual repression during the Victorian era? People really did have to rein in their inner “beasts”.

Emily: We (actors) sat around and talked. Do we all feel we've got a little beast inside of us? So we did talk about that. All of us read up about the period and everything that was going on. Sexual repression was very prominent.

And so these ghost stories about werewolves and vampires were incredibly relevant at that time when everyone was feeling that they had to repress the beast or repress the instincts. So that was interesting setting.

Do you have an “inner beast” and when does it come out?

Emily:  I don't know. It hasn't come out yet. It's lying dormant. I don't know. Someone's got to really piss me off I think. It's weird because I see people “wolf out” a bit. When you see people fighting in the street and stuff and their faces contort when you see guys fighting. I think that's the beast coming out, when they're so angry and so raging and all of those instincts are just- they're just flying out of you.

But I've never been in that state yet. I've never been in a fight.

Driving in L.A. will sure bring out the beast in you. (laughter)

Emily: Oh yeah. I get mildly irritated driving here. But people are probably more irritated with me because I'm still a little tentative because (in England) I'm on the other side of the road normally. So I'm sure I irritate everyone much more than they can irritate me.

Are you generally a fan of horror films? Do any of them stand out for you?

Emily: It's funny because I had never really done the horror genre of certainly not the monster movie genre. And I love doing something I've never done before so that was cool. Benicio's the freak about the horror movies. He is so well researched. He's seen every one of them twenty times.

But I was a really nervous child so I never wanted to go watch horror movies. I remember the first one that stands out to me was The Exorcist and I didn't sleep for weeks. And then Jaws as well which is kind of a horror movie in some ways. I have a real problem with the ocean. And with the unknown, the depths of the unknown.

Maybe that's what so fascinating about monster movies. You're dealing with the supernatural element, the unknown forces. Maybe that's why people are so fascinated by the Ouija Board, whether ghosts exist, where do we go when we die? I think that's why these movies will always be so relevant and of interest to people. Because we just don't know.