Emily Blunt Felt Like She Was Being Cooked From The Inside Out Filming The English In A Corset
No one in history has ever felt comfortable in a corset. If they said they were, they were lying. Corsets are tight, restrictive, even suffocating — and their thin waste illusion doesn't seem worth the sacrifice they require. Now imagine wearing one while shooting an action scene. For her role in the upcoming Western drama series "The English," Emily Blunt did just that.
In "The English," which debuts November 11 on Amazon Prime, Blunt plays Lady Cornelia Locke, an upper-crust English woman embroiled in a grueling journey across the 19th-century American West. After a series of disturbing murders brings her closer to her travel companion, Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), Locke realizes that she has more in common with the Pawnee man than she once thought (Entertainment Weekly).
But in recent interviews, Blunt has been, well, blunt about the realities of shooting her action scenes in a corset. As one might imagine, moving around in a corset is even more difficult than putting one on.
The corset acted like an oven on Blunt's organs
Corsets have been around since at least the 16th century (Vogue), but that doesn't mean Emily Blunt had to make her character in "The English" feel old-fashioned at all. In fact, she strove to make her character feel alive, real, and very modern.
"This show feels different from other Westerns. It doesn't feel old fashioned," Blunt told Entertainment Weekly. "And so, I approached her in quite a modern way. She just happened to be in a corset or wear a bonnet for some of it."
And speaking of corsets, Blunt didn't love the experience of wearing one on set. "It's so awful," she said to EW. "It's so awful, especially because we shot in Spain in the summer and it was so breathtakingly hot. The corset acted as like a sort of oven on my organs. There was no breathing space."
Corsets are women's cross to bear in period pieces
While Emily Blunt attested that the corset was uncomfortable, she also told 9Honey that such a trial is a job requirement of appearing in period pieces. "The corset will always be a challenge," she said. "When you're a woman in a period piece, it will be your cross to bear, but it's just how it goes."
But even with multiple fans on her, Blunt still felt like her insides were under pressure. "It doesn't matter how many fans they put on you, if you're being cooked from the inside-out, there's only so much you can do," she explained.
Still, there was an apparent upside to all of the discomfort. "But it looks great, and as everyone kept telling me, 'What a great silhouette,' you know, so that's all I care about," she said. "I just went on that: 'great silhouette.'"