STACK NZ February 2017 Issue 81

28 / 30

TRAIN
THE
GIRLON THE
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Emily Blunt didn’t know whether
to be flattered or insulted when
she was approached to play the
bloated, alcoholic star of The Girl on the
Train.
After spending three months shooting
the film wearing a shapeless suit and ratty
overcoat over her growing baby bump,
when STACK meets with the mother-
of-two in NewYork she is back to her
svelte self, wearing killer Louboutin heels
adorned with gold spikes.
“I didn’t even audition. They approached
me about it. I was very complimented
but at the same time, slightly concerned.
Were they thinking: ‘Nothing says Emily
Blunt like a blackout drunk‘?” laughs the
actress, who wore pink full-cover contact
lenses to make her eyes look bloodshot
and had prosthetic blotches and bags
applied to her face to play flawed heroine
Rachel Watson.
“We’ll see how people react to it,
but there’s a reason why women loved
the book – it doesn’t shy away from the
underbelly of domestic life; it doesn’t
shy away from brutality; it doesn’t shy
away from the fact that these are pretty
unlikable women in many ways,” she says.
“I also believe the reason why this book
was such a huge success was because
people could see aspects of themselves in
these women to varying degrees.”
A publishing phenomenon, Paula
Hawkins’ whodunit thriller has sold more
than 15 million copies since its release
in January 2015, and every actress in
Hollywood had their eye on the lead role.
When Blunt was first offered the
part, she devoured the book within 48
hours and was equally impressed by the
script. “What I loved about the book and
the script is that they articulately depict
broken, damaged women. You don’t see
that in cinema very often, as women are
often held in a male ideal. Both the book
and the film strive away from that.
“I loved that Rachel is written as a
delusional Nancy Drew character, and
the fact that it is told in a sort of blurry
sense because the lead character is an
alcoholic and the most unreliable witness
to a crime,” she notes. “I was fascinated
by how they were going to capture that
sense of addiction and voyeurism [on film];
what we think we see and don’t, what we
think we remember and don’t…and the
blurry lines between all of those aspects.
“All you want is to try and understand
the people you play. As the onion unravels
with Rachel, you quickly realise she
has a drinking problem and is incredibly
untethered and unstable. She is riddled
with guilt, loneliness and desperation, as
well as the need for love and connection,
and she finds a great deal of comfort and
solace in the people she obsesses over
who all seem to have a love in their lives
that she no longer has in her own life. I
have huge empathy for her.”
Blunt professes to her own fascination
with people watching on trains and
buses, just like her screen alter ego. “I
remember taking the bus to school every
day. I probably was somebody with an
overactive imagination. I used to look at
the other passengers and wonder about
their lives and where they came from
and why they looked the way that they
did, and imagined them as children. So I
understand those voyeuristic tendencies,
hopefully not to the unhealthy degree
that Rachel vicariously lives through these
people. But I think that we all have that
desire to see behind closed doors and to
see what we shouldn’t be seeing.”
IN
IRLN H
continued
“people could see aspects of themselves
in these women to varying degrees”