Emily Blunt has revealed what she dreads seeing in film and TV scripts.
The actor can currently be seen in BBC Two drama The English, starring as a woman on a revenge mission in 1890s America who collides with Chaske Spencer’s Eli Whipp, a Pawnee-born ex-US army officer on an adventure of his own.
In a four-star review for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote that the series is “pure, delicious, American cheese that, at its best, feels like a Coen brothers creation”.
Speaking to The Telegraph in a new interview, Blunt said: “I love a character with a secret. And I loved Cornelia’s buoyancy, her hopefulness, her guilelessness.”
She added: “It’s the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words ‘strong female lead’. That makes me roll my eyes – I’m already out. I’m bored.
“Those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things.
“Cornelia is more surprising than that. She’s innocent without being naive and that makes her a force to be reckoned with. She startles Eli out of his silence and their differences become irrelevant because they need each other to survive. I thought that was very cool.”
In another recent interview, Blunt said her actor brother-in-law, Stanley Tucci, “loves” his sex symbol status.
Tucci has been married to literary agent Felicity, who is Blunt’s older sister, since 2012.
The English is out in full now on BBC iPlayer.
