“I’ve spent my life writing,” says Emerald Fennell. “It’s something I’ve done ever since I was a child. It’s something I would be doing whether I could make films or write books or not.”
After University, Emerald wrote a pile of spec scripts to “find her voice.” During hiatus of BBC’s Call the Midwife, where Emerald played Nurse Patsy Mount for 27 episodes, she wrote three books. “My last book, Monsters, which was an adult novel, Showrunner Jessica Knappett read it and asked me to write on the fourth season of her amazing show, Drifters.”
“I think I had that thing that many screenwriters had where I had a few things bought but didn’t go. It’s a constant process of nearlys until you get that first credit, which Jess gave me.”
After Drifters, she wrote and directed a short called Careful How You Go that went to Sundance and helped her pitch and ultimately write and direct Promising Young Woman, a dark comedy about a young woman traumatized by the tragic events of her past.
Then, Emerald wrote on Season 2 of Killing Eve and now she’s back on the silver screen as writer/director of Saltburn, where an Oxford student finds himself drawn in the world of a charming aristocratic classmate.
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