Carey on.
Carey Mulligan first charmed audiences little more than a decade ago in the critically acclaimed coming-of-age drama An Education. The role garnered the then 24-year-old an Oscar nomination for best actress and set her on the path to being lauded as one of the finest British actors of her generation. She’s since taken to leading lady status with an assured self-confidence, with many of her performances in period pieces – Suffragette, Far From the Madding Crowd and as Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.
But her latest work in the upcoming film Promising Young Woman is about to subvert everything you think you know about Carey Mulligan as an actor. Mulligan plays Cassie, a smart, messy, multidimensional and flawed woman set on avenging her best friend Nina after her rape and subsequent suicide. The exquisite costumes and pretty prose synonymous with much of Mulligan’s previous work have been replaced by rudeness, revenge and deliberately revealing dresses smeared with lipstick and splashed with alcohol.
Since its premiere at Sundance in January, critics have struggled to define the film, with descriptions ranging from “jet-black comedy thriller” to “horror-swept rom-com” and even a “cupcake-coloured but plungingly dark revenge thriller”. Most reviews have grappled with the morphing of dark subject matter – like assault, consent and victim-blaming – into something so wildly entertaining, with a romantic subplot.
Mulligan performance is pitch-perfect and complements the work of two other promising young women behind the scenes – writer and director Emerald Fennell (who was the showrunner for season two of Killing Eve and also played Camilla in season three of The Crown) and Margot Robbie, who produced the film with her company LuckyChap Entertainment. Given this issue of Vogue is about strength, solidarity and supporting one another, we asked Robbie to interview Mulligan about what makes her performance, and this project, so groundbreaking.
MARGOT ROBBIE: “Hi Carey, I’m calling from LA. Where are you at the moment?”
CAREY MULLIGAN: “I’m at home in Devon [in the UK] in the country. It’s a good place to be.”
MR: “It’s such a weird, weird time [with COVID-19]. It’s like living in a movie.”
CM: “Were you in the middle of filming?”
MR: “I just finished [the next] Suicide Squad and I was doing camera tests and prepping my next film and they pulled the plug and stopped. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. Were you on a break or working?”
“No, I was on a break. I was prepping a job and we were going to start shooting in a couple of weeks. I feel like we’re all going through shock and trying to readjust [in lockdown]. I just ordered a knitting set from Amazon so I could learn to knit. I went:
