The Girl on the Train starring Emily Blunt has its London premiere. Get on board the hype train.

Author Paula Hawkins, director Tate Taylor with Emily Blunt, Luke Evans, Rebecca Ferguson & Haley Bennett

Girl on the Train Author Says 

Emily Blunt Is "Too Beautiful" for the Main Role

I was struck this morning by the above headline in E News: 

The piece goes on ...

Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, doesn't think Emily Blunt is a good fit for the movie adaptation of her novel.

Blunt, who stars as the titular character Rachel Watson, is too pretty to play the main character who is supposed to be an overweight divorcee with a bad drinking problem. "Oh, she's too beautiful to play Rachel," Hawkins told the Daily Mail. "They've done their best, I mean to sort of make her look a bit s--t, but you know..."

Despite her strong opinion about the casting of the movie, Hawkins admitted she did enjoy Blunt's work in The Devil Wears Prada and said she does an "extraordinary job" in this film.

Wow! Talk about twisting words. Here’s what Hawkins actually said to the Daily Mail. Note how the editing out of the first part of the sentence changes the entire meaning. Suddenly it sounds as though the opinion is Hawkins whereas she is actually talking about what ‘everybody’ else is saying.

‘Everybody moans about, ‘‘Oh, she's too beautiful to play Rachel’’ and she is [too beautiful]. But the thing about Rachel, you know the key part of her is her self-loathing and how bad she feels about herself.’

That position is one I took in my take on the book. While ENews describes Rachel as ‘an overweight divorcee’ I’ve felt from the start that the puffiness and weight gain that often accompanies alcoholism doesn’t mean Rachel would be overweight in a hugely obvious way. It is more likely that her once fashionable clothes would now be tight and ill-fitting, stretched to their limits, buttons and closures, once easily snapped shut, now strained, left open. The 5 to 10 pound brand of ‘overweight’. The ugliest thing about Rachel is the amount of self-loathing she feels.

Hawkins went ‘that the way the actress carries herself managed to capture the way her character feels ‘horrible’ about herself ‘amazingly’ well.

Blunt herself said: ‘I haven’t played a woman like Rachel before. Alcoholism is a brutal disease and it exacts a terrible cost on the people who suffer from this addiction and the people around them. It was a great challenge to play a very messy, broken character.’

The Girl on the Train which had its premiere in London this week also stars Justin Theroux, Luke Evans and Rebecca Ferguson.

Here's the latest ad for the film which makes its debut October 6th. 

The Daily Mail