# The “nightmare” 2016 role Emily Blunt couldn’t wait to be over: “I’ve never been more scared”

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/the-nightmare-2016-role-emily-blunt-couldnt-wait-to-be-over-ive-never-been-more-scared/
- Published: 2026-07-21T08:00:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-07-29T07:19:00+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/nightmare-role-emily-blunt-couldnt-wait-over/
- Topics: Music

## Key points

- Blunt found portraying Rachel Watson emotionally daunting.
- The Girl on the Train centres on addiction and unreliable memory.
- Detailed make-up and performance choices depicted intoxication.

## Summary

Emily Blunt described playing alcoholic divorcee Rachel Watson in 2016 thriller The Girl on the Train as emotionally frightening and a “nightmare” she was relieved to finish. The role mattered because it required her to portray addiction, self-loathing and unreliable memory in an unusually damaged female lead, rather than a conventional glamorous protagonist.

Adapted from Paula Hawkins’s 2015 bestseller, the film follows Rachel as she becomes entangled in a missing-person investigation after observing a seemingly perfect couple from a train. Blunt used prosthetics, contact lenses and a scene-by-scene scale of intoxication to show Rachel’s changing condition; the novel had spent 13 weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.