When Empire meets Emerald
Fennell, it’s just ten short
days until the premiere of the
director-actor-showrunner-
author-Christ-woman-we’re-
running-out-of-hyphens’ debut
feature fi lm at Sundance.
Today, she’s in London, but
as this is being written she’s
in Park City, having just set
it buzzing with the Carey
Mulligan-starring, Margot
Robbie-produced Promising
Young Woman — her revenge
thriller/horror/romcom
with Mulligan in an entirely
un-Mulligan role as Cassie,
a young woman hell-bent
on settling scores. Until
maybe she isn’t. “Ballsy”
and “brave” were the most
commonly tossed-out
adjectives to describe what
had just screened. Both pretty
apt adjectives, once you’ve
spent a jot of time in Emerald Fennell’s company.
You might know her name from her
showrunning the second season of Killing Eve.
You might know her face from her playing
Camilla Shand in the third season of The Crown.
You might know her voice from her YA novel,
Shiverton Hall. If you don’t know her at all, get
ready to have that corrected. For the multi-
hyphenate, multi-threat Fennell has made
a fi lm that is nothing like you expect, strident in
its originality and, frankly, completely bonkers
for a fi rst piece of work. We really want to know
what she was thinking.
Was this the very fi rst idea you had for
a feature script?
No, but it was the fi rst one that I’d the
opportunity to write, because LuckyChap
[Margot Robbie’s production company] bought
it when they did. What was amazing, both
psychologically and fi nancially, was that I was
able to really set the time aside to do it. And
in terms of the idea, the fi lms I love are very
unusual. I like thrillers. I like twisty-turnies.
Story-driven, character-driven, but also
entertaining. I really wanted to make a female
revenge movie about what it would be like if
a woman actually did want to take revenge.
a bad person and everyone’s
kind of right in a way.It’s being called a #MeToo
movie but, as you say, it’s
much more about the
diff erence in perspective
— between men and women
but also between women
and women...
I said to all of the actors and
actresses — and I say that for
clarity — you have to come at
this as a person who believes
you are absolutely right. Don’t
come at this thinking you’re
a douchebag or a monster or
a bad feminist. When I was
pitching it and making it, it
was like Cassie is the avenging
angel, [ but] I think everything
is forgiveable. Almost
everything, within reason. But
two things are crucial, and those
things go back to any religion
or any philosophy, which is to
acknowledge and apologise.
And if you don’t, then that’s
when it can’t be forgotten.
That’s the problem, and
I think this is so common
— people want forgiveness
without the acceptance that
what they did was wrong.
And I think for most people
who’ve been through any kind of — particularly
this sort of thing, but any kind of — trauma,
it’s often not the thing itself, it’s being made
insane. We’ve been taught to think, “Oh, I’ve
probably misinterpreted.” And so really, this
is a fi lm about saying... If we’re talking about
our revenge story and we’re talking about
an avenging angel, she’s coming with two
options. One is forgiveness that comes with
repentance or, “If you don’t see your fault,
I’ll show it to you.”Was it important to look at the complicity
of all of us?
The truth is interesting and the truth is, we’re all
up to our necks in it. And that’s across the board.
There are all types of hypocrisy, all kinds of
cruelty. Parasite was so unbelievably eff ective
because it made us all re-evaluate the way
our system works and how cruel it is and how
cruel we are. Get Out was so eff ective — and
unbelievable genius — because, again, it made
everyone [re-evaluate]. That’s where horror
can be so eff ective and that’s why, I think, these
fi lms often are horrors because it is horrifying.
It sounds very trite, but we’re all horrifying,
and there’s nothing worse than having to go
back and look in the past. ❯In the trailer and the opening scene,
we see ‘nice guy’ Adam Brody taking
advantage of Cassie — and then you
assume she’s done something really
awful to him...
It depends on your interpretation of it
and what she’s doing. When we talk about
this stuff [#MeToo], we always talk about
the most extreme stuff. The most diffi cult,
the most obvious. It’s not like that. Every
woman I know — lots of men I know, too,
but every woman in particular — knows it’s
so much more complicated. And what we
grew up with, particularly our generation,
was stuff that was more like an anecdote that
we made out of things that were terrible.
Often [done] by people we all really like.
And mostly by people who never, in a million
years, would think of themselves as bad
people — and in the wider frame of the world
are not bad people. The point I started from
was the conversations that happen when
people experience the same thing and come
away with very diff erent ideas of what’s
happened. And that’s what this fi lm is. It’s
a kind of a whodunnit. It’s a kind of, “What
happened?” But nobody — and this is really
crucial — is lying, and nobody thinks they’re