Emily Blunt: An Englishwoman in New York

There is, according to Emily Blunt, a widespread misconception that playing the most beloved and magical nanny in fiction must have made her a veritable heroine at home with her two young daughters, Hazel and Violet. Not so, apparently.The other night, I overheard Violet telling John [Kras­inski, Blunt’s husband of 10 years] that she wanted to watch Mary Poppins. He said: 'Do you want to watch Mummy’s one?' She said: 'No, Julie Andrews.'" Blunt shrugs, resignedly. "Julie Andrews reigns supreme in our house."

Sometimes, she concedes, the girls will ask her to do the clipped, throwback Poppins voice, and Hazel is wide­ eyed that her mother can produce it "without her costume on". But the absence of costume is sometimes awkward for Blunt herself. "I walk around Brooklyn in a baseball cap and tracksuit bottoms most of the time," she confesses. "So there’s an embarrassing moment when parents will say to their kid, 'This is Mary Poppins,' and the kid will look at me, like: 'No, it fucking is not.'"

preview for Behind the scenes: Emily Blunt for Harper's Bazaar March 2020

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It’s a dark, dank winter’s afternoon in Manhattan, where the sleet has been falling sideways all day. Blunt arrives, dressed somewhere halfway between her Brooklyn sweatpants and her character’s Edwardian bustles, in a ruffled Isabel Marant blouse, jeans and wedge trainers, her very blonde shoulder ­length hair tucked into a red chequered deerstalker hat with furry ear­flaps. Fresh from the Bazaar shoot around the corner, she slides into the green leather booth beside me and offers: ‘Should we get a drink?’ She gamely enquires about the tequila list, then reconsiders and orders a crisp Austrian white instead.Though this is the first time we’ve met, I feel the need to tell her from the outset that we are, in fact, neighbours; since the family moved in a year ago, we live on the same street in Brooklyn Heights, where I’ve often seen her and Krasinski, who is himself an actor, director and screenwriter, walking their Labrador, Finn. "Isn’t it the best area?" enthuses Blunt, once she’s over the coincidence of us living so close. "It’s idyllic, with all the history, and the great figures of literature who lived here."

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Emily Blunt