‘The English’ Boss on Emily Blunt & Chaske Spencer’s ‘Exquisite Tenderness’ in Western

Stars keep saddling up for Westerns (call it the Yellowstone Effect), and like The CW’s Walker Independence, The English focuses on a woman hell-bent on justice in the late 1800s.

A Quiet Place’s Emily Blunt is Cornelia Locke in the Prime Video series, a proper but steely Brit making her way to Wyoming to hunt down the man responsible for her son’s death. During a hellacious run-in with a racist Kansas hotelier (Ciarán Hinds), Cornelia finds herself in dire straits, along with an ex-cavalry scout from the Pawnee Nation named Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer).

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The two pair up — drawn together by shared losses and a desire to make their enemies pay — for a journey across the Plains that will test their mettle and challenge conventions.

“Both Cornelia and Eli stand outside the norms of the time,” says writer-director Hugo Blick, who executive produces with Blunt. Matters of race and class between them “are simply meaningless…all that matters now is that they survive.” Which means the elements, of course, and the revenge Western genre!

“What draws us through it, thrillingly,” he adds, “is the exquisite emotional tenderness that develops. Not only do you want to see Eli and Cornelia survive, you want to see them thrive.”