When John Krasinski directs wife Emily Blunt and asks her to be quiet

Los Angeles — We have known John Krasinski as Jim Halpert, that clean shaven, charming, funny guy in the sitcom “The Office”. It's a role that he has received critical acclaim for, and for which he's won numerous awards in the period 2005-2013.

Flash forward to March 2018 and we meet a bearded John, now a father of two daughters (Hazel, 4, and Violet, 1), and married to one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood, Emily Blunt.

He now also has the titles of writer and director to his name.

John, 38, surprised us recently by directing and co-writing a horror thriller, “A Quiet Place,” that recently opened the 25th SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas and received critical acclaim.

At Austin's Omni Hotel, we met with John (and the rest of the cast) and asked him how having his film open the festival felt like. 

“That’s a great question,” he said. “You are literally witnessing me still processing what happened last night. That was one of the greatest moments in my career period and I will never forget it. Even to have that audience reaction, was a monumental thing for me.  And listen, I love the movie. I hoped people would love the movie, and you have a reaction like that, it’s the best feeling in the world.

“That said, I had always heard, I have been down to Austin many times. I love Austin. I had heard so many great things about the festival and my dearest friends used to work for the festival. So I always knew that it was the coolest festival. I've always wanted to come. But then when you get in that room and you are with those people and with this community of people who really love film, it sounds like I am in a Cameron Crowe movie. There is a vibe out on the street.  It’s like we are all in ‘Almost Famous’ or something. These people are there for you. They were so supportive and so kind. I wouldn’t want to open the movie anywhere else now.  So this was great.”

The movie is about a family of four: John (who plays the father), Emily (the mother), Millicent Simmonds (the family’s deaf daughter and Millicent is a deaf actress) and Noah Jupe (the hearing son), who must lead their lives in silence after mysterious creatures that hunt by sound threaten their survival.

John talked about directing his own wife and the challenges of doing so.

He said, “It’s an interesting thing. Emily and I have kept our careers very separate and it’s for a very simple and selfish reason. We like to watch each other’s stuff. I never read the script for ‘Sicario,’ so I was lucky enough to be an audience member for ‘Sicario.’ That is how we keep them separate. You have these experiences. You fly to these places and you get to meet all these people. We never even thought, we had talked about working together, but our big thing was we never wanted to be in a movie where the story of us being married was bigger than any story we could tell. It just felt like it would be unfair to the movie.

Photos courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales

“Then this one came along. It was pretty out there. We thought hey, this is way bigger than any story of us being married. And yet, I always wanted her to be in it, but I think as we were, she was shooting ‘Mary Poppins’ at the time. We had just had our second daughter. So there was a lot going on. I thought, I won’t ask her to be in it.

"She even started recommending other actresses just based on the ideas that I was pitching. Then one day, she said, you know, do you feel comfortable with me reading the script and are you at a point where you think that you can let me read it? I said, sure.  We were on a plane, and she read it. She looked over at me and I swear, I thought she was sick.

"So before I could reach for the barf bag, she said you can’t let anybody else do this movie. I said, I don’t know what you are talking about. She said, no one can play this role. I said are you saying what I think you are saying? It was like she was proposing to me or something. She said, will you let me play this part? I went yeah, I think I will let you do it. I guess, I mean, there’s an audition process. 

“But no, it truly was. I have said it before. People think I am just being nice, but it was the greatest compliment of my career, because there is no one I know in this business who has a better taste level than her and makes better choices in this. I knew that if she was asking to be in it, and because we have kept our careers so separate, she would not be doing this as a favor to me. She would not be doing this to help me. She would be doing it, because she knows how to play that role.”

John and Emily, who will be celebrating their 8th anniversary on July 10, is one of our favorite Hollywood couples being both so nice, warm and down-to-earth.

When asked what made her want to do this movie with John, Emily, 35, said it was "the emotional core of the film [that had] me wanting to jump at it. I was also intimidated by the idea of playing a character who experiences my own deepest fears as a mother, of not being able to protect my children.

"It’s definitely in that way felt a bit like uncharted territory, that I usually play a part that offers some kind of escapism. This was a very confrontational experience going through this film with my own fears. I think that really the reason why you are so frightened in this film is partly because you are invested in their plight as a family.  That’s ultimately why I have watched ‘Jaws’ 30 times, because it’s not about the shark chomping off people’s legs. It’s not about that. It’s about these three men trying to overcome something.  That is why I keep watching it.”

When asked to talk about one of her most crucial and challenging scenes in the movie of giving birth, Emily cannot make a sound. So did she give any sort of suggestion to John?

“It was definitely incredibly helpful that I had gone through two births with my own kids, so that was a lot to draw on.  The whole sequence, the whole childbirth sequence we shot over the course of a week," Emily said.

She calls it, "the most draining sequence, the most physically demanding sequence and gut wrenching sequence to shoot." 

Of the two children cast members, Millicent is the deaf actor in real life.

When we asked John about casting Millie, her audition process and why he chose her from all the other kids, John replied, “That’s a great question.  The studio was so supportive of this and it was non-negotiable for me to not have a deaf actress play this part.  And not just because I didn’t want to, it’s not that I didn’t think that someone could play this part, but to me there is an understanding of, it would be a much more general performance of what you think it would be like to be deaf." 

John said casting a deaf actress not only brought an articulate texture to the film, but it also allowed him to know what it really is like to be hearing-challenged. "I gained so much more from Millie, from casting her and not only did she deliver one of the most awesome performances I have ever seen, but she also was my guide through everything."

Millie Simmonds

“Like I said to you that she watched your whole being when you talked to her, learning sign language with her is better than learning sign language anywhere else, I promise you that. Because, it was almost like she became the parent and she had these wide eyes and super warm expression and wanted you to succeed so badly.  When we were signing really badly, she went don’t worry about it, it’s actually like this. It made you learn it quicker, just like good parenting.  It was a brilliant experience for me."

Says John, “she had just done ‘Wonderstruck’ with Todd Haynes and I wrote to Todd and said what was your experience?  He wrote back probably an email that as an actor you would want to get from anyone, let alone a director as accomplished as that.  He said, not only is she one of the best actors I have ever worked with, but she’s one of the best human beings that you will ever have the privilege to meet.  So I cast her immediately after that.”

Asked about guiding John on the set especially with the use of sign language, Millicent, 15, explained through an interpreter, “I think maybe with facial expressions when he was signing.  Sometimes when he signed like ‘I have always loved you,’ I said you know, in American sign language the facial expressions are very important part of our culture and they are part of our grammar and language.  So he had a happy look on his face when he was signing at first and I said oh no, you have to change the face, the facial expression, to make the same meaning.”

As for Noah (“The Night Manager,” “Suburbicon,” “Wonder”), 13, not talking in the movie was tough. The English actor said, “It was quite challenging actually, because I have spoken for all my life.  But it was fun, and I mean, as soon as it was cut, we were all talking. We weren’t signing the whole time.  But I think it was cool to experience that side of the world.” — LA, GMA News