DEADLINE – Though they started dating a decade ago, John Krasinski & Emily Blunt had never worked together before this year, when the Krasinski-directed A Quiet Place cast them as husband and wife and tapped into the unspoken language they’ve come to share. Krasinski was nervous to approach Blunt to star, but on screen, as they navigate a world in which the slightest sound could mean instant death, it’s that real-life connection that telegraphs everything another movie might wrap up in dialogue. The film has been the runaway horror hit of the year, and Kransinki is already at work writing a sequel.
A Quiet Place has had an extraordinary life in the nine months since its release. Could you have predicted this?
Emily Blunt: Has it been nine months? My god!
John Krasinski: We’re ancient. I’ll speak for myself when I say it’s completely and totally surreal. I genuinely don’t know if I’ve processed it yet. We treated it like a neat little indie movie; it felt like an indie movie. We thought it was really special, really unique, and really different, but we were pretty sure we wouldn’t get much more than four or five high-fives from friends. And turns out we have a lot more friends that we didn’t even know about.
Blunt: It has been overwhelmingly exciting for me to see people watch this film and have their hair blown backwards by it. I always thought we would get here. I remember John showed me one little bit of one scene in the early stages of the edit, while he was trying to find the first cut. It was when the basement is flooded with water. I flipped out. I remember saying, “John, this is so cool!” And as he knows, we Brits don’t enthuse too readily, unless we really mean it, so I think he knew I meant it.
People who hate genre movies loved this movie. People who had never seen a horror movie before loved this movie. It has been universal. The afterlife that it has had, it’s not something either of us really know how to contend with, but it’s wonderful.
The movie gives away very little of the backstory on the world, but you had all that information in your head, John. Were you surprised by the questions that came?
Krasinski: I love the idea that people are putting the puzzle pieces together and coming up with theories. I love getting challenged about it. Like, why don’t they just live by the waterfall? I get that question on Twitter all the time. How would they build a house? How would they break ground? People are like, “Oh. Yeah, I guess.”
Blunt: Just live in the waterfall!
Krasinski: Exactly. [laughs] But it was always one of the things Emily and I loved from the very beginning, this idea that if you know more than the family does, the tension goes out of the room. It was a way to bond you to the family quicker. If you feel there’s an answer to all this, you don’t care.
Continue reading John Krasinski & Emily Blunt Reflect On ‘A Quiet Place’ And The New Perspective Of Its Sequel
