Emily Blunt is opening up about her disappointment over losing the role of Black Widow to Scarlett Johansson after turning it down due to prior commitments.
The Wild Mountain Thyme actress, 38, talked to Howard Stern about her decision to turn down the offer, saying she was contractually bound to make Gulliver’s Travels, and the timing would have conflicted.
Why did Emily Blunt turn down the role of Black Widow?
“I actually do want to clean up the story. I was contracted to do ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. I didn’t want to do ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. It was a bit of a heartbreaker for me because I take such pride in the decisions that I make, and they mean so much to me, the films that I do, so that was tough,” she told the Sirius XM radio host.
“They [Fox] kind of have a bit of a hold over you. There were other movies that I would want to do. At some point, I realized that I had to get rid of this optional picture deal because it would just hang over me and I didn’t want that. Ultimately as hard as it was, I don’t think anyone expected for the hand to be forced. I think you kind of like hope that it isn’t. I care very deeply, very, very much, about the choices I make.”
‘I don’t know if superhero movies are for me’
Despite expressing some frustration about feeling forced to turn down such a coveted role, Blunt said that she didn’t discuss the offer of Black Widow with any of her co-stars in Gulliver’s Travels and did end up enjoying her time on the set.
“I didn’t talk about it with anyone on set or anything because there were a lot of really lovely people in it who were heaven to work with. I actually had a good time, a laugh, with all of them, but it irked my heart for it to have happened in the first place.”
Blunt also later told Stern that she’s glad in a way that she wasn’t able to take the iconic role given that she isn’t the biggest fan of superheroes.
Although it’s hard to imagine now anyone else fulfilling the role of Black Widow except for Scarlett Johansson, it’s easy to forget that many celebrities in the entertainment industry have either turned down or failed to get major movie roles.
While Blunt may have lost out on being part of the Marvel universe, she certainly hasn’t floundered in Hollywood in the last 10 years. Her film, A Quiet Place, directed by her husband John Krasinksi, gave fans the perfect taste of horror and suspense when it hit theatres in 2018, bringing in a whopping $188 million in the United States and Canada.
Blunt has also completed her film Jungle Cruise, co-starring with Dwayne Johnson, Paul Giamatti, Jesse Plemons, and Jake Whitehall. The movie was ready to hit theatres in October of 2019 but was pushed back two times due to the pandemic and is now set to come out July 30th of this year. There have been rumors of a sequel to her highly popular movie Edge of Tomorrow, with actors Tom Cruise and the late Bill Paxton, but those rumors have yet to be confirmed.
Wild Mountain Thyme was Blunt’s latest movie to come out, having been released in December of 2020. Blunt portrays a young woman whose affections for her friend Anthony, played by Fifty Shades of Gray’s Jamie Dornan, cloud her judgment as she strives to gain his attention and love. The film brought in an estimated $100,466 at the box office, an impressive number given the challenges surrounding the pandemic and a limited number of theatres being open at the time.
Blunt and Krasinksi met in 2008 and married in 2010. A staple couple in Hollywood, they sold their Hollywood mansion in 2019 for a place in Brooklyn, New York, presumably to gain a quieter living space to raise their two daughters, Hazel and Violet.
The couple hopped onto the Graham Norton show a few years ago to talk about what it was like doing A Quiet Place together, with Krasinksi saying that both he and Blunt were quite nervous about working as a team.
Krasinksi joked that he had heard his wife was a “diva” on set, which gave the audience a good laugh. In a serious moment, the actor/director told Graham that it was “the greatest collaboration” he had ever had in his acting career. The couple shared the story about the first time they met, with Krasinksi admitting that he was a “huge fan” of the actress and had watched The Devil Wears Prada at least 72 times.