'Sunshine Cleaning' Exclusive: Stars Emily Blunt and Mary Lynn Rajskub
Emily Blunt
Is your character the "bad sister" in this film?
There's no such thing! An unmotivated slob. No, I mean she's a bit of a pothead. She's kind of a remarkable girl, kind of eccentric and wacky. I think she would do something great — if she could be bothered, but she's stuck and she's a bit lost and certainly reluctant to start a biohazard clean-up service with her sister. They don't really get on, they're very different, but in a way this weird, dark job sort of bonds them and helps them in a cathartic way to get over their own mother's death by coming into people's lives when they've experienced something profound and upsetting. They get to clear it all away — literally.
Could you relate to someone so unambitious?
Absolutely. I'm so unmotivated at times. I think I've become increasingly tenacious, I guess, but ambitious is... I think everyone's ambitious. Everyone wants more. Everyone wants to get to a higher place. So yeah, like everyone else, I have ambition, but I understand someone who wants to sit on a couch, yeah.
Did you go "method" with the pot-smoking?
That would be telling. I've never done that. [laughs] I had herbal tobacco, on the day, which kind of actually makes you feel stoned, it's so disgusting. I actually felt quite baked, smoking the herbal stuff.
You and Amy Adams have very different natural accents — did you coordinate to sound believable as sisters?
I guess a little bit. I mean as much as you can. They're a real, American down-and-out family so we wanted to capture that voice — I think there's a kind of mid-Atlantic accent, there's a standard American accent, and there's one that's a little —
A flat Northeastern accent, like Wind Chill.
Yeah, and this was a little more Albuquerque, I guess.
Have you done a Southern yet?
No, I'd like to. I'd like to do that.
Rosamund Pike once said she dreamed of doing Southern characters. It must hold some kind of fascination for the Brits.
I think Brits are supposed to be... we find it easier than a standard American. Something about the vowels or the sounds or the lazy way that they talk is very similar to how we talk. I've heard that from dialect coaches I've worked with, that Brits are really good at Southern accents, weirdly.
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