Much like the characters in her movies, writer-director Emerald Fennell is a fan of learning the rules, if only to deliberately (and oh-so-deliciously) break them. In “Promising Young Woman,” Cassie Thomas uses intimate knowledge of sexual violence to expose perpetrators; in “Saltburn,” Oliver Quick studies the elite world of the carelessly wealthy so he can manipulate it for his own nefarious purposes; and in her filmmaking, Fennell finds a bold balance between control and creativity by establishing structure, then purposely dismantling it.
Here are some key takeaways from her uniquely disruptive approach.
Preparation is key.
Fennell’s directing follows a specific pattern, starting with intensive preparation before evolving into brazen risk-taking. She wants everyone on set to feel that “we’re super, super prepared, we know where we are, and we trust each other,” she says. Once there’s a foundation of trust, she advises doing the boring take first, “the one we know is going to be in the movie—beautiful, subtle, audition acting.” The meticulous preparation becomes a safety net, helping actors feel secure in their performance choices.
Once the rules are set, “fuck it up.”
Just when that security is established, it’s time to throw some entropy into the equation: “Everything’s perfect; now, let’s fuck it up,” Fennell says. “Let’s do some really bad acting. Let’s do the worst acting we can do.” While this may seem counterintuitive after a technically perfect take, the Academy Award winner finds that emotional veracity—what makes a film interesting—stems from messiness. “If you do your homework and everything is there, then you can break it,” she explains. “And it needs to be broken a little bit, because otherwise, it’s not interesting.”
Embrace the unpredictable.
Fennell rejects the notion that a character must remain consistent throughout their arc. “I’m obsessed with this idea we have of character inconsistencies,” she says. “I’m not a consistent character in my life. Nobody I know is consistent.” Instead, she welcomes her characters’ incongruities, which often become the breathing heart of her films. Just think of how Cassie abandons her careful methods in the film’s painfully direct final confrontation, or how Oliver oscillates between vulnerability and calculating lust, as perfectly manifested in the disturbing grief- and lust-fueled grave-humping scene.
This can mean a complicated paradox for filmmakers. “That’s the trouble, often, when you’re making something: You have to always remember that the more subtle it is and the more painstakingly true to life it is, the less real it feels,” Fennell explains. Rather than try and resolve the contradiction, however, she thrives in it, by embracing both nuance and melodrama. “So much of the time, what you want is subtlety; you want [actors’] incredibly brilliant instinct, because they are geniuses,” she notes. At other times, though, “you need to let people be obvious or react to news in a really shocking way.” It’s this willingness to accept the subtle with the shocking, the instinctual with the obvious, that creates the visceral moments emblazoning her movies.
For filmmakers at any stage in their career, Fennell’s approach offers valuable insight: By preparing and setting up structure first, you engender a space in which actors can make astonishing—and astonishingly wonderful—choices.
This interview was originally featured on Backstage.
