Emily Blunt wanted characters written like a man

Emily Blunt wanted to portray complicated women on screen.

The ‘Sicario’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada’ star revealed she once told a screenwriter to write her character “like a guy” so it wouldn’t be monotonous. “‘Text me like a guy and I’ll do the ‘girl’ stuff. Just text me like you would a man: fallible and complex and difficult and seedy,'” Blunt recalled to Porter magazine. “And we still need to remind people not to hold women to any particular ideal.”

Blunt now directs the Prime Video series The English, in which she plays a woman in the Wild West seeking revenge for the death of her son. She also serves as an executive producer on the series.

“I love that she acts like Alice in the Wild West and looks like the ‘ideal’ woman. And yet there’s this vengeance fever in her,” Blunt said. “She looks so out of place in this toxic, more masculine landscape that she’s arriving at.”

In fact, Blunt has to deal with media questions in the same way, admitting that while she was on the set in Atlanta for David Yates’ upcoming drama Pain Hustlers opposite Chris Evans, she received questions from the press about parenthood.

“It’s interesting that women are still made to fight back against their work decisions and men aren’t,” Blunt said. “When I was on set in Atlanta, which was a challenge because I would go home every weekend – and then the kids would come over for five, six days – it was amazing how many people would ask where my kids were.”

She added, “I was like, ‘I bet this question doesn’t get asked by Chris Evans or Andy Garcia or Jay Duplass.’ And you just normalize it…but I catch myself explaining or compensating too much to make it seem like, “I can still do anything and I’m still available.” It’s maybe that awareness of perception.”

Blunt portrays a single mother who works part-time as a prescription drug dealer and calls it her “shady” role yet.

“The pace would keep me up at night,” Blunt said.

The ‘A Quiet Place’ star previously explained that she loathes the term ‘strong female lead’ in screenplays.

“It’s the worst thing when you open a script and you see the words ‘strong female lead,'” Blunt told The Telegraph. “That makes me roll my eyes. I’m already out I’m bored. These roles are written incredibly stoically, you spend all your time acting tough and saying tough things.”

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