Freed from lockdown alongside A Quiet Place Part II, harried mom Emily Blunt wins all the wine
The last time Emily Blunt was on Jimmy Kimmel Live was some 14 months ago, just before, as she put it on Wednesday’s return to the show, “the world shut down.” Reminiscing with Kimmel, the A Quiet Place Part II star also noted that, in retrospect, doing a sketch on that episode called “A Quiet Plane,” where she’s trapped in a tiny fuselage set with 30 people wetly shushing everyone, might not have been the best idea. (Kimmel joked that the British Blunt represented the birth of the English covid variant. Which she probably was not.)
But that’s all more than a year of our lives under the bridge at this point, as Blunt was there to promote, finally, the long-delayed theatrical release of the horror sequel, directed by her husband, some guy named John. (That guy also appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Wednesday to promote the film.) And while the married couple’s double PR-rush might seem a little needy, well, the premiere of the movie having taken place more than a year ago, and with nothing much to do in the meantime than be stuck at home with two small kids, it’s understandable Blunt and her partner would be itching to restart the publicity machine. Or just get out of the house. Blunt noted the unfortunate timing of the release on another level, pointing out that a film about a world completely disrupted and shut down by an unprecedented and deadly threat wasn’t intended to be so resonant. Sure, covid isn’t an invasion of toothy, sound-activated space-alien death monsters, but it might as well be.
Kimmel, commiserating with his guest at being penned in with her TV- and movie-dependent offspring for the most of a year-plus, then broke out a little game for Blunt, promising her fabulous prizes if she could pick out salient details from some ubiquitous children’s programming. For Blunt, mom of girls aged 7 and 5, the exercise proved something of a dawdle, really, as the cartoonish likes of Peppa Pig, and the StoryBots no doubt dance and sing maddeningly in her dreams at this point. (Still, Paw Patrol’s evil Mayor Humdinger was an impressive pull.) She got a few wrong, sure (Blunt’s daughter Violet is gonna be so pissed mom blew that Frozen lyric), but nobody’s Mary Poppins-perfect.
Rewarding Blunt with a much-needed bottle of wine for each right answer (and some kid-pacifying Go-Gurt, baby carrots, and Fruit By The Foot for each miss), Kimmel soon had the happy Blunt piled high with bottles (with her taking a nice, cleansing swig of some lukewarm white). And that’s even before the Disney princess lightning round, where Blunt completely cleaned up, nailing the proper names of everyone from Moana, to Tiana, to Aurora (that’s Sleeping Beauty to those not incessantly corrected by cooped-up children), to that British housekeeper at the end who isn’t technically a princess, but who earned Blunt some more much-deserved wine anyway.