Emerald Fennell has enjoyed acclaim as an actress (this year even appearing as Midge in Barbie) and even an Emmy nomination for The Crown, but she hit the zeitgeist in 2020 when she won the Original Screenplay Oscar and was nominated as Best Director for her first writing-directing feature film, Promising Young Woman. Her follow-up, Saltburn, has also won wide praise since debuting at the Telluride Film Festival, and is among the 10 Best Picture nominees at this weekend’s Critics Choice Awards.
Fennell has an extraordinary and much needed cinematic voice and it comes through loud and clear ad event provocatively both her first two films (and before that as an Emmy-nominated writer and producer of Killing Eve), but that is all on purpose.
She certainly gets people talking, and that is what she is doing with me for this week’s edition of my Deadline video series Behind The Lens. We discuss all aspects of her career, how she finds her creative mojo, working with her producer Margot Robbie, the key themes that drive Saltburn and why her films have become such a magnet for actors who line up to be in her movies.
To watch our conversation and go “behind the lens” with Emerald Fennell, click on the video above.