Emily Blunt Talks The Young Victoria

9 months ago 06th Feb 14:47

Emily Blunt shot to fame in her role as Emily Charlton in The Devil Wears Prada alongside Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway back in 2006.

And since then she has seen her star rise working on Charlie Wilson's War, Dan in Real Life and now The Young Victoria, which follows the early reign of Queen Victoria and her relationship with Albert.

So on the set of her new film Emily talking about her regal role.

So, lots of sitting around today...

Lots of sitting... Yes, which is rather nice actually if you’re in a corset. That’s a relief. It’s a big relief. I’m quite overheated though with all these layers. The big cloak is like carrying a bear on my shoulders so that’s interesting.

What about the crown?

The crown has left a dent in my head which they just cover with make-up so I don’t look frightening to you. But it’s remarkably heavy.

I notice someone rushes up and takes it off your head between set-ups.

Yeah, they do. It starts to wobble so I have to make everything very slow.

How have you found playing Victoria?

It’s wonderful. It’s exciting, it’s a challenge to say the least. She was a remarkable girl and so of course you want to do her justice. And there’s a big journey to play with her from this young, rather stubborn teenager to a rather magnetic queen very much in command of herself.

It’s a big arc to find and particularly when you shoot out of order, it’s tricky to maintain that. But I’m loving her. I’d read a lot about her before I did this and, contrary to popular belief, she was when she was younger a feisty and emotional and intelligent, vibrant person.

I think that people mistake her for being this widowed, mourning queen. So it’s exciting that we’re going to refresh people’s opinion of Victoria in this.

Wasn’t she quite oppressed by her mother when she was young?

She was. She had a very isolated childhood and, you know, she wasn’t allowed any friends, or the friends had to be interrogated before they were allowed to meet her. She led such a secluded life and wasn’t allowed her own bedroom, had to sleep in the same room as her mother til she was 18, couldn’t walk down stairs without someone holding her hand. I mean, just so awful!

So no wonder she made this stubborn burst for freedom when she became queen and made some mistakes, these silly, reckless mistakes because she was finally independent of everyone.

And it was probably frightening to put a young girl who’d lived in her imagination in that position. So Albert came in and she needed him; he was her greatest achievement, I think.

And he came in with his very Teutonic ways and sort of reeled in some of that emotion so that they became this very successful couple. But she wouldn’t have been the success she was without him.

We’ve also heard she had a very close relationship with dolls...

With dolls! [laughs] There’s quite a bit of playing with dolls so I’m going back to my Barbie days in this film!

What was it like to be chosen for the role? Especially with this film being funded by an American company

Well, I think the British would have been up in arms if they’d put an American in this part. But still, there are much bigger English actresses out there than me and I pretty much just demanded that they cast me in the role. Or pleaded first but then demanded... And it seemed to work.