Esquire USA - 03.2020

29

ON MARCH 9, 2018, JOHN KRASINSKI AND HIS WIFE,

Emily Blunt, were in the back of a car in Austin heading to the

world premiere of A Quiet Place, at SXSW. Krasinski was terrified,

and Blunt could tell. He had been working on the final sound mix

of the movie (which he cowrote, directed, and starred in along-

side his wife) until 5:30 that morning. He left the studio and flew

directly to Texas. “Emily was holding my hand, and she was like,

‘You should eat something,’ ” Krasinski remembers. “And I said,

‘What do you mean? We just had lunch.’ And she goes, ‘John,

you didn’t eat lunch.’ I totally didn’t realize how the nerves were

coming out.” Blunt told him to focus on one thing. And he said

he’d be happy if some people clapped at the end of the screening.

Krasinski had never done anything like this. But A Quiet Place

wasn’t just a genre departure for the man still best known as

The Office’s Jim Halpert. It was a high-concept horror movie

in which blind monsters with superhearing will kill anything

that makes a noise. Krasinski and Blunt portray a married cou-

ple trying to keep their family alive.

The film plays out in agonizing, stifling near-silence. In the

theater that evening, any tiny sound—a body shifting in a seat,

John Krasinski

Isn’t Trying to Be Your

Red-State Hero

The actor-director on A Quiet Place Part II,

the military, and an Office reunion?

by MATT MILLER

culture

&

style

DOUG INGLISH/TRUNK ARCHIVE

THE