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How Emerald Fennell became Bafta’s standout star

Emerald Fennell scooped up two gongs for her debut film: Promising Young Woman - Corey Nickols/ Contour
Emerald Fennell scooped up two gongs for her debut film: Promising Young Woman - Corey Nickols/ Contour

At Sunday evening’s virtual Baftas, British writing, directing and acting powerhouse Emerald Fennell scooped two gongs for her debut film: edgy MeToo revenge comedy and talking point du jour Promising Young Woman.

Fennell, 35, is expecting her second child with her partner, film and advertising director Chris Vernon. On the night she won awards for Best Original Screenplay and Outstanding Film (while missing out on Best Film, Editing and Casting), we witnessed her resplendent in bridal white, enthroned in a palatial hotel room, clutching a melting chocolate Bafta.

In her sensual, jolly-hockey-sticks contralto, our ecstatic-looking heroine declared herself overwhelmed, sweaty-palmed, and in need of a better speech. Expressing gratitude for everyone who conspired on this “labour of love,” for which they were paid a mere “packet of crisps,” she enthused: “I’d like to go to all of your houses and kiss you, which I obviously can’t for a number of reasons.” A nation swooned.

Dogged by lockdown delay, the movie will finally be released in the United Kingdom next week on the Sky Cinema and NOW streaming platforms. Meanwhile, we’re waiting to hear which of its five Oscar nominations will come to fruition on April 25. With her debut feature, Fennell has become the first British woman to be nominated for the Oscar’s director prize, as part of an historic year in which two women – Fennell and Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao – are in the running for the first time. Together, they are only the sixth and seventh women to be shortlisted.

The catalogue of Fennell’s achievements is impressive - Zoe McConnell via Getty Images
The catalogue of Fennell’s achievements is impressive - Zoe McConnell via Getty Images

We all need some good news and Emerald Fennell feels like its embodiment: a robust, if self-effacing Renaissance woman who is brilliant, beautiful, and bountiful in her generosity towards others. Her close friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag fame and herself no slouch, calls her: “The most stylish person I’ve ever met. Not just in her work and her appearance, but in her spirit, how she speaks, how she carries herself.”

The catalogue of Fennell’s achievements is impressive. She first came to public attention as gutsy redhead Patsy Mount, the closet lesbian with a traumatic past in the BBC’s Call the Midwife. Next she took over from Waller-Bridge (no easy act to follow) as head writer/showrunner for the second series of Killing Eve. Her portrayal of a young Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown was devastatingly good, even though she shrugged praise off, saying: “I’m basically playing a chain-smoking posho standing in a corner making cutting remarks. So it’s not a stretch.” In between, there were novels (children’s and adult) and the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s upcoming musical Cinderella, premiering in July.

Fennell downplayed the praise for her performance as Camilla in The Crown - Des Willie/ Netflix
Fennell downplayed the praise for her performance as Camilla in The Crown - Des Willie/ Netflix

Fennell herself is the first to acknowledge her background of happy privilege. Born in 1985 to a family of “wizards and circus performers,” her father is the boho-lux society jeweller Theo Fennell, her mother, Louise, a writer. Family friend and Crown co-star Freddie Fox describes the domestic atmosphere as “Mitfordy”; starry fits the bill too, given Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber have been known to crop up around the dinner table. The director attended Marlborough, then Oxford, where fellow students drunkenly told her she’d one day win as Oscar. Her 18th birthday (theme: romance) featured in the pages of Tatler.

This literally gilded youth undoubtedly brought connections, but still she put in the graft. According to Waller-Bridge, Fennell exerts herself “like a bloody Trojan. She’s been working on about 10 projects at once since the day I met her,” turning to her laptop after 14-hour slogs on set. Josh O’Connor, who played her Prince Charles, has stated his awe at her ability to crush it as Camilla – while pregnant with baby number one – having just wrapped Killing Eve, while writing Promising Young Woman, then immediately jetting off to produce it. Not for nothing does Fox lovingly refer to her as the “silent assassin”.

But, then, Fennell is not only a grafter, she’s also incredibly bright, meaning her work is not merely good, but reveals palpable edge. Like her father’s jewellery – in which the dark and the coruscating combine, the beautiful with the gothic – her self-declared specialism is “poison popcorn”.

Promising Young Woman appears typical in this respect. Radical, unsettling, it boasts a perkily pink, Doris Day aesthetic that belies its dark heart. Described by one critic as “weaponising feminine styles”, Carey Mulligan’s unicorn-shirted, cupcake-wielding Cassie drops out of medical school to avenge her best friend’s rape, feigning blackouts in bars, before confronting the “nice guys” who attempt to assault her. As her former Chickens co-star Vicki Pepperdine remarks, Fennell’s fierce intelligence lets no one off the hook.

Her willingness to embrace female nuance and unlikeability makes her part of a new generation of talent buoyed by Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Michaela Coel’s unjustly Golden Globe ignored I May Destroy You, and Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper’s compelling I Hate Suzie. While books are full of women who frighten and fascinate (Fennell counts the Brontes, Patricia Highsmith and Hilary Mantel among favourites), screen depictions often feel far flatter, she thinks, because physical appearance supercedes attention to detail. “These kind of weird old ladies or pervs or voyeurs” are absent; “We don’t see female losers at all.”

Fennell’s attempts to place these types front and centre are drawn from personal experience: she tells the story of an incident when, as a crop-topped teenager, a well-turned out stranger approached her and said: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not, but you’re going to die of stomach cancer before you’re 30. I just thought you should know,” then hurried off.

To this day, Fennell thinks about it every time she has stomach ache. As she recalled in a recent interview: “I just thought, that’s it. That’s what it’s like. That’s what it’s like to be an angry, frightened, mean woman. I guess she’s my muse. That cruel, cruel woman.” For that’s another Fennell asset: she exhibits consummate emotional intelligence, in addition to the regular variety.

Witness her transformation of the Duchess of Cornwall, once maligned as the most hated woman in Britain, into one of The Crown’s great heroines. Online it is often asked whether she is related to Joanna Lumley, Ab Fab’s throaty Patsy as Fennell is Call the Midwife’s. There’s no link, but like Lumley, Fennell is an incredible looker.

Envious Brits would have to lop off her tall poppiness were Emerald not obviously such a jewel. Try as one might – as with Lummers and Waller-Bridge – no one who has come across her has ever had a bad word to say. The most an old friend could come up with was that she might not be the most sporty of women, which will only further endear her to most. Roll on the Oscars, when she can accede to full national treasure status.