New releases, music videos and album news — indie, rap, rock and pop. Always covering Ren, Chris Webby, Sam Tompkins, bbno$, CHINCHILLA, Muse, Yungblud and more.
The “nightmare” 2016 role Emily Blunt couldn’t wait to be over: “I’ve never been more scared”
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.
In short
- 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.
Explained simply
"The Girl on the Train" is a 2016 psychological thriller adapted from Paula Hawkins's bestselling 2015 novel. The film follows Rachel Watson, a woman drawn into a missing-person investigation after she observes a seemingly perfect couple from a train.
Emily Blunt, a British-American actor known for films including "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Sicario", played the lead role of Rachel Watson. Rachel is an alcoholic struggling with self-loathing and unreliable memory, a psychologically damaged character rather than the conventional glamorous female leads Blunt had typically played.
To portray Rachel, Blunt used prosthetics, special contact lenses and carefully varied how intoxicated the character appeared from scene to scene. This approach allowed her to show Rachel's deteriorating mental and physical state as the film progressed.