Emily Blunt finds the thrill of revenge in ‘The English’
The English
MOVIES
Alfonso Cuarás, the director of The English, was intrigued by the work of Anthony Minghella, so he borrowed a page from the director’s book in the script.
“In Minghella’s The English, the woman who has left the husband she loves for an American playboy says in order to have a better life, she decides to become a sex worker,” Cuarás says. “I thought, that’s a great starting point, let’s give her a job, let’s give her a life.”
In Cuarás’s hands, an English teacher, Emily (Emily Blunt), who has loved her English teacher, Henry (Mark Wahlberg), for years and years, decides to leave him for a playboy she meets at a night club in the city.
“It was a very big decision,” Blunt says. “I had to really think about it. And I thought, it’s got to be an important choice. We’ve just seen Henry walk away from her. We’ve seen him take out his frustration on the playboy. What happens now? We’ve got to see Emily make a choice that was as important and as difficult as the one she had to make. We’re not going to see them go up against it, but we’re going to see them face it head on. I decided that was the best way to do it, to see them face the challenge head on.”
When it was time to shoot, Blunt said she had a feeling all the actors were working up to it, but they didn’t have a script.
“All the guys were working up to that, but we didn’t have a script. I didn’t even have a script. I didn’t even have the first one that I wrote down,” Blunt says. “Sometimes you just feel an affinity with the character when you’re on set, an understanding, and that’s how I felt about this one. I loved this character
