Background and Timeline:
Emerald Fennell arrived into my world with her 2020 film Promising Young Woman. A friend and I saw it one afternoon at the Los Feliz 3 theater in Los Angeles, then sat at the top of a staircase in Silverlake overlooking the reservoir and talked all about it. My initial thoughts were good. We both agreed we liked the fact that Fennell took some big swings and thought the lead performances were great, even if the film was a bit corny overall. Then, as happens in Los Angeles, everyone else began talking about it, and soon, the poor reviews had me second guessing myself. I started to feel unsure about Fennell as a writer/director. Media moved on rather quickly and it was not until now, months after seeing Fennell’s latest feature, Saltburn that I was curious enough to look into her career.
As I’ve learned Emerald has been working up to her current success for a long time now. She has been involved in the film world in one way or another since her first acting role in 2006, when she was 20 years old. Being that she has accomplished so much in front of and behind the camera, her career spans a web that is hard to follow. She’s been an actor, writer, show runner, director, and children’s book author, performing multiple of these roles at the same time. Her tornado of talent and effort is impressive, though it was no doubt helped along with connections from her wealthy family.
Emerald started in the industry as an actor. At Oxford (the school attended by the characters in Saltburn) she was scouted by an agent. From there, she can be seen taking the common path of a British actor in the late 2000’s/2010’s: an episode of a crime drama, a few episodes of a period drama, a Channel 4 production, and a BBC One period drama. She acted in the 2015 film Danish Girl (obviously I never saw that) as well as the 2012 Anna Karenina (tried watching but got bored). Her most known role was in the Netflix show, The Crown in which she played King Charles’ mistress-turned-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles. Poised with the success The Crown brought her, Emerald could have easily continued her career as just an actor.
From the beginning though, that was never enough. Early on in her creative journey, Fennell began writing. There were a few small television shows she wrote on, and a feature that never came to be. However, her first big writing break was on season two of the Phoebe Waller-Bridge created Killing Eve. Actually, on season two, Emerald was the head writer, show runner, and one of the executive producers. She didn’t just take on the challenges, she completely submerged herself in them. Here is the rough timeline I gathered from my research:
JULY 2018: The Crown season three begins filming
DECEMBER 2018: Season 2 of Killing Eve wraps filming
MARCH 2019: Promising Young Woman is shot in twenty-three days
APRIL 2019: Killing Eve season 2 premieres
AUGUST 2019: The Crown season four begins filming
DECEMBER 2020: Promising Young Woman is released
There is no way Fennell would have been able to accomplish this much if she didn’t have a good team around her, and more importantly, if she was not like-able. She had to have leveraged her relationships in smart ways in order to be introduced to the right people, or transition from friendship to business collaborator. Fennell comes from a wealthy and connected British family. She grew up with money, most of her immediate family are artists, and she was a part of a prominent social group during her youth. Learning how to navigate a room/social scene is baked into life in England, and that “fake nice” character exists in Emerald’s scripts.
In 2010, Emerald met Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the movie Albert Nobbs. Neither of them are even featured in the trailer. Both played small parts, but they got along and maintained a friendship for years. It was 2018 when Waller-Bridge tapped Fennell for Killing Eve.
As life for artists becomes increasingly online centered, building in-person relationships has become less and less necessary. Plus, the coronavirus pandemic heightened a lot of people’s social anxiety and lowered their self esteem, especially when it came to meeting new people.
The following is an excerpt from the Washington Post article “Loneliness is taking friend-making apps mainstream”
Artists, especially those in film, are already under pressure to “make connections”, so approaching someone in a genuine way can feel embarrassing. Also, people notoriously flake on plans, or show themselves to be someone who only cares about what you do can do for them. Or… you just don’t like them. Maybe they’re lame, maybe you are. But at the end of the day, the amount of work and money it takes to grow a relationship in our 2024 post capitalist hellscape is enough to make people give up.
I don’t know what the niche, female intellectual-but-sexy film scene in late 2000’s and 2010’s England was exactly like, but I don’t think it is very similar to our post-pandemic, on strike for years, dog-eat-dog 2020’s American niche, female intellectual-but-sexy film scene.
I say all this to highlight Emerald’s clear talent for relationships, while expressing my understanding of the current climate for young filmmakers.
Does any of this take away from the enormous amount of effort Fennell has put into her work? No. She wrote an Oscar winning movie, yes Promising Young Woman won the 2021 Oscar for best original screenplay, while producing, show-running, and writing a popular television show. Then directed her Oscar winning movie script, which got her an Oscar nomination for directing. THEN she went into post production on her feature while prepping for and acting in Netflix’s number one tv show….
GIRL WAS AT WORK.
The discipline, confidence, consistency, and creativity required to execute what she has, is VERY HIGH. I can’t imagine her 2018-2020 as anything other than incredibly chaotic.
Themes:
We can see the themes and concepts Emerald developed during 2017-2020 form the through-line in her work. Killing Eve’s main character is a female assassin. Fennell did not create the concept for the show, but three months after it wrapped, that same violence and murder showed up in her debut feature. Carrey Mulligan’s Cassandra attempts to kill a man at the end of PYW, but ends up murdered herself. The same violence and assassination is presen in Saltburn, when Barry Keoghan’s Oliver kills multiple people. Each project is also in some way is about sex, control, anger, and revenge.
It’s a funny contradiction. Fennell has been praised for her out of the box daring ideas, but the truth is she just didn’t force herself to re-invent the wheel between each project. She took what worked for one, and used it to inform the others.
Saltburn folds themes from Killing Eve and PYW with her commentary on British elitism and classism. Was that knowledge what she obtained through her own family and social scene?
Not only has Fennell created quite a recognizable world for her work to exist in, she gave herself permission to use what she knew. Why create an entire new world from the ground up when she had already done the groundwork on another project?
But it’s not just about the ideas. It’s how well the execution is handled. Performing at the level Fennell does takes a lot of practice AND a place to learn. Where could she have gotten to see the inner working of a large scale production and watched how multiple directors worked while not having the pressure of directing herself? How about a television show with a $12 million per episode budget? Yes, The Crown. I can’t image a better place to WATCH than on set for a show that is all about details, pace, accuracy, and whose subject matter is about elitism and classism. Not to mention Fennell collected a fat paycheck for acting opposite Josh O’Connor. I would’ve done that for free.
I like the following as a symbol of how interconnected Fennell’s work is: In an episode of Killing Eve written by Emerald, Sandra Oh’s character (Eve) speaks about her friend who was killed in a nightclub. Her colleague tries to make a joke and Eve says “If you say murder on the dance floor I will kill you.”
Four years after writing that line, Emerald used that same song during the much discussed ending of her sophomore feature. Seems a bit full circle doesn’t it babe?
Confidence:
It takes an immense amount of self-assuredness in order to take on such varying roles. What you need to be a great actor is different than what you need to be a great show-runner, or head writer, or director. It takes pure confidence to flow through all of that. Maybe its the money? Taking a risk is always less scary when you have money to fall back on, right? Or maybe Emerald knew she could lean on any one of her careers if the others slowed down. No acting gigs coming in? I’ll just write a tv show. No one hiring me to write? I’ll write my own movie, and then direct it.
But.. are the movies good?
Here’s the gag. I don’t actually like Fennell’s work all that much. I thought her season of Killing Eve was the least interesting of the four, I hate the color palette in Promising Young Woman, and the script is still too juvenile for my taste. Saltburn is her worst work in my opinion. I was not impressed by Jacob Elordi (still am yet to be) or Barry Keoghan. The world is not fleshed out enough, and I stopped counting after 45, but in the first 45 minutes there were 3 montages. That’s one montage every 15 minutes. THAT IS TOO MANY! I have a real pet peeve about montages, and using the same footage twice. Saltburn was 2 hours and 11 minutes long. If you can’t fill it, cut it.
Then again, the downfalls of each project makes sense when you look at the timeline of what she had going on. Not to mention she was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she shot Promising Young Woman. Even though she got it all done, her end products seem to have suffered.
Here are some numbers for those of you who like that sort of stuff ;)
DEBUT FEATURE: Promising Young Woman
Budget: $10 million
Box: $20.3 million
SOPHOMORE FEATURE: Saltburn
Budget: $75 million
Box Office: $21 million
I was surprised to see how little Saltburn made at the box office, but that number does not include revenue from streaming, where the film was in the top 10 highest debut’s ever on Prime Video.
I do not know what Emerald is poised to take on next, but I do know that regardless of the outcome, she looks like she’s having fucking fun. She’s making the work she wants and even if it’s just to hate-watch, people are watching. She doesn’t shy away from challenges, lets herself dream, and treats people well. Ultimately, all fundamental lessons we can all learn from.