Emma Mackey has revealed that Russell Brand gave her an unusual nickname on the set of the 2022 mystery film Death on the Nile.
The movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh, is based on the 1937 Agatha Christie novel, and follows sleuth Hercule Poirot’s Egyptian holiday aboard a glamorous river steamer, which turns into a hunt for a killer when a picture-perfect couple’s idyllic honeymoon is tragically cut short.
In it, Mackey played Jacqueline “Jackie” de Bellefort, the scorned lover of Armie Hammer’s Simon Doyle, while Brand portrayed Linus Windlesham, the former fiancé of Gal Gadot’s wealthy heiress.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, when discussing why a close-up scene of her face in the new fictionalised Brontë biopic Emily was so powerful, Mackey said: “I think I just have a lot of eye. When I was working with Russell Brand on Death on the Nile, he called me ‘Eye-Face’. I was like, ‘Well, thanks for that.’”
The film depicts the brief life of English writer Emily Brontë before she wrote Wuthering Heights.
In a four-star review for The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “The camera swims in Mackey’s eyes, in bold and confrontational close-ups, while Abel Korzeniowski’s score is a battle cry of violins which, at times, deliberately overwhelms the dialogue. [Director Frances] O’Connor, in a sense, has challenged us to meet Emily on her own terms, even if those around her would not.”
Last month, Mackey – who is endlessly compared to Margot Robbie – said she doesn’t “mind” the comparisons between her and her fellow actor, but she would like to “move past” them.
Since the 26-year-old actor’s breakout role in Netflix’s comedy series Sex Education, fans have pointed out how similar she looks to the 32-year-old Robbie.
“It’s just funny,” Mackey said in an interview. “And I think Margot has had the grace and humour to be able to play on that, and allow me to be in the same film as her – bless her.”
The pair star together in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, out next summer.
