Emily Blunt - Τhe best of both worlds

The star opens up on her intense new role, and family life

- By Gill Pringle

Emily Blunt doesn’t tend to gush about her leading men – unless of course it’s her husband, John Krasinski, with whom she co-starred in A Quiet Place –but she’s making an exception for her latest co-star, Chaske Spencer.

Starring together in Prime Video’s six-part western, The English, Spencer is anything but English – instead, a striking 6’ 2” Native American hunk of a man who roared onto the big screen 13 years earlier as werewolf Sam Uley in New Moon, reprising the role throughout The Twilight Saga.

“Chaske plays Eli like it’s a Paul Newman role. He’s a big old movie star who’s about to explode onto the scene,” says Blunt, whose aristocratic Lady Cornelia Locke falls deeply in love with Spencer’s Pawnee ex-cavalry scout, Eli Whipp.

In equal parts tender as it is violent, these two outsiders cross paths as Locke seeks to avenge the death of her son, while Whipp is on a mission to reclaim his land.

If Blunt dresses modestly in the Victorian long dresses, corsets and hats of the 1890s, then Spencer, 47, is nothing but dashing with his mohawk, shaved head, earrings, army jacket and gun. “I knew there was so much about how Chaske played Eli that Cornelia would fall in love with, because he’s magical. It’s very easy to create that chemistry,” she says.

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