Emerald Fennell

Emerald Lilly Fennell was born in London in 1985, into a family where she surely learned to cultivate artistic taste and sensibility, since her father, Theo, was a jewelry designer, and her mother, Louise, a novelist. So she developed a career as an actress and writer, and her little sister Coco Poppy would end up as a fashion designer. Before outlining her professional dedication, she studied at Marlborough College and then at Greyfriars in Oxford, where she already took part in some of the theatrical performances put on by the students.

Although he had a first television appearance in the Trial & Retribution series in 2006, it was in the sitcom Chickens , alongside Simon Bird and broadcast between 2011 and 2013, when he already had a significant role. At the same time, he appeared on movie screens in Albert Nobbs , a 2011 film starring Glenn Close , and where the most significant thing was not his insignificant role, but the friendship that was born with another actress with little role, the one later famous for Fleabag Phoebe Waller-Bridge . Then the following year came another small role as a Russian princess in Joe Wright ‘s version of Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina .

Just in 2012, a series that made a fortune had started on the BBC, Call the midwife! , through which distinguished actresses would go, such as Vanessa Redgrave , who has been in all the seasons, and others who were trying to carve out a career. In this second group was Fennell, who appeared in an episode of the second season as the nurse Patsy Mount, and that she must have liked, since she later had a presence in 26 episodes of four other seasons.

But it was evident that the roles they offered her were secondary, a good professional was simply recognized when she was entrusted to be in The Danish Girl , or when Wright recruited her again for Pan: Journey to Never Land , both from 2015.

Fennell was not limited to his acting facet. He liked to write, and surely his mother could have given him advice for this profession, so he launched into children’s literature with “Shiverton Hall”, which he published in 2013, and which had a second installment, “The Creeper”. Then, also in the field of fantastic tales, but intended for a more adult audience due to its somber tone, came “Monsters”, described by the critic who reviewed it in The Guardian as “disturbing”. Would she get to write for the screen as well? In 2016 she got her first shot at Drifters ., British sitcom, a genre that he had already cultivated, so he performed well in the 6 episodes in which he was involved. There was also her friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge, also a writer as well as an actress, who would trust her when she created her celebrated series De ella Killing Eve , which combined thriller with black humor.

Because 2019 was an important year for Fennell, always on the British audiovisual scene. Waller-Bridge was going to focus more on Fleabag , his new hit series, and he handed over writing relief to Fennell on Killing Eve , where he was “showrunner” and contributed to the script for 6 episodes of the second season, and one of them , “Nice and Neat,” was nominated for an Emmy. And at the same time, as an actress, she continued to be in prestigious titles, no less than playing Camilla Parker, the love of the Prince of Wales to the detriment of Diane Spencer, in the third and fourth seasons of the acclaimed, on occasion, The Crown .

But of course, her consecration as a writer and debuting director has come with A Promising Young Woman , a film that resists pigeonholing, of intelligent feminism and with a thriller format, where there is room for irony and black humor, and that knows how to avoid the cliché or easy speech –avoid explicitly framing yourself in the #MeToo movement–, the adjectives used to describe it make sense, “enjoyable and cathartic”; a famous actress, Margot Robbie , has participated in the production. Says Fennell, “I really wanted to write a script about female revenge. There have been quite a few movies recently about women taking over the reins, but they tend to be very violent or very sexy, or also super depressing. I wanted to describe a normal woman and how she would get revenge in the real world. In this case, she rarely pulls out a gun. It’s weirder and more twisted than that.”

The film has achieved 5 Oscar nominations, and three of them directly concern Emerald, those relating to film, direction and screenplay. She knows that she cannot and should not be the protagonist, -although she reserves a fun cameo for herself-, and she entrusted a fantastic Carey Mulligan for this role , who also has a candidacy for the golden statuette. She mentions Fargo as a reference , although The Night of the Hunter is explicitly included in the film , also because of its cautionary tale format. As she has explained, ” I don’t think of it as a vigilante movie. She’s angry, and grief is addressed, but she’s also about how we forgive, and how we as a society can move forward.”

Curiously, her new project that has just been announced, Zatanna , is located in the world of DC superheroes. It has its point of irony, because it would seem that all the outstanding female directors are receiving this type of offer to direct, since her rival at the Oscars Chloé Zhao plans to direct The Eternals , a film in the Marvel universe.

Emerald Fennell is romantically linked to advertising man Chris Vernon. The one who was a midwife in fiction gave birth to a son in 2019, just in time to be able to shoot The Crown .