How John Krasinski tortured Emily Blunt (again) for 'A Quiet Place Part II' by exploiting 'her greatest weakness'
Every married couple has their quirks. In the case of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, that quirk happens to be... torture? Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2018, The Office star 'fessed up to torturing his real-life spouse and onscreen leading lady with a killer sequence in his horror hit A Quiet Place. When the time came to make A Quiet Place Part II, Krasinski carefully conceived of another torturous set piece that Blunt would have to perform. "She said it was one of the worst experiences of her life!" he proudly boasts. "I know the magic sauce with my wife now." (Watch our video interview above.)
In the original film, Blunt's character, Evelyn Abbott, was forced to give birth in a bathtub while sound-devouring alien monsters lurk just outside the door. Shot over the course of a week, The Devil Wears Prada star had to do multiple takes of that physically demanding scene. For the sequel, Krasinski decided he wanted to put her mind, rather than her body, through the wringer. "I think she was prepared for me to physically torture her again, so instead I thought, 'I'll sneak attack her by using the one thing I know is her greatest weakness.'"
So what is Blunt's Kryptonite? Children in peril. A Quiet Place Part II picks up in the immediate aftermath of the first movie, with Evelyn leading her family — including eldest daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds), younger son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and newborn baby — off their farm and into the larger post-apocalyptic world. They quickly discover that the invading aliens aren't the only thing they have to worry about: early on in their journey, Marcus stumbles into a bear trap and Evelyn has to help him. "I thought, 'Let's make [Emily] do a scene with a child in peril,'" Krasinski says. (In real life, the couple are raising two daughters.)
"It was brutal," Blunt says of her husband's latest torture trap. "It was just hard on everybody: it was hard on Noah, because obviously he has to go crazy in that scene. It was hard on the cast, and hard on the crew. It was 100 degrees; it was so hot that whole week and we were shooting in a coal mine!"
But don't worry, folks: everything's copacetic in the Krasinski-Blunt household. Both performers make it clear that it would take more than a little torture to spoil their love and respect for each other. Blunt in particular marvels at how her husband upped his directing game for A Quiet Place Part II, thanks to the fact that his character — Abbott family patriarch Lee — didn't survive the first movie. "The film is so ambitious, he's now got those wings of confidence behind him after what he did with the first one," she explains. "There are a lot of these highly choreographed, very clever one-shot camera moves, so he needed to be behind the camera more."
For his part, Krasinski missed the opportunity to share the frame with his real-life wife and the rest of his on-screen family. (Lee does appear in an extended flashback that opens the film.) But he also gained a new appreciation for how they navigated the various perils he put them through. "I really got to be a front and center audience member to watch these actors do what they do," he says. "It was really great to focus on that rather than wonder if we got it and move on."
A Quiet Place Part II opens in theaters May 28.
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