'Celebrating the quiet, observant ones… Emily is definitely one of those'

On Digital Spy, Emma Mackey reveals that her hardest scene from Emily didn't make the cut.

Refraining from giving too much away, she revealed: "There are some things that aren't in the film also which I remember filming — the mask..."

Frances O'Connor, who wrote and directed the film, replied: "Oh, when you smash it?"

"Yeah. I remember that," added Mackey. "I think I did it three times and it was like 'I can't do this anymore' it was like too much."

After O'Connor asked if she was "devastated" the scene had been cut, Mackey joked she was "totally devastated," before continuing: "But no, it was so charged, there were so many scenes that very charged — I don't want to be too actor-y about it — there were many hard scenes but it was always fun to do because you have something real to get your teeth stuck into." (Iona Rowan)

Glamour interviews her:

What was your favourite part of portraying Emily Brontë?

I love that we’re celebrating the quiet, observant ones… Emily is definitely one of those. I loved developing that with Frances, who had a very clear image of what she wanted and the kind of tone that she wanted for the film. It felt tangible if that makes sense. It was a really immersive experience. I just tried to make her as human as possible and not like a long-forgotten character. But I enjoyed the whole process. We were on location the whole time, and it was only six weeks, so it was a contained, intense shooting period. We had rehearsals before and got to know everyone, and then we were just straight in there. It was a real passion. It was fantastic to properly craft a film together and fight tooth and nail to get it made. It's so gratifying now to see it on screen.

Six weeks sounds like a very rapid filming process – although it’s starting to make sense how you’ve been able to take on so many different acting projects recently! How did Emily come to be made in such a compressed time frame?

Because it's an independent film with a small budget – and that means reduced filming times. We just had to make do. I'm glad we did because it just added such a wonderful pace to the film, and yet it still remained very delicate – it feels like we really took our time in some moments, which I'm really pleasantly surprised to see [on screen]. The original cut was four hours long, so there was a lot in there that’s not in the final cut for the film. It's so brave of Frances to tackle this subject that is so completely unknown to a lot of other people. It was so evocative and rich, even just reading it and then doing obviously was a whole different sport.

You studied English Literature & Language at Leeds University. Were you already a fan of Emily Brontë’s work?

Yes. I’d read Wuthering Heights years ago. I think I actually found [this role] harder to do because of studying English Literature, though – I was analysing it like it was a book on the curriculum. And, strangely, it didn’t feel like this part was for analysing. It was so evocative, powerful and chaotic in so many ways – it just needed to be experienced without putting too many rules or formatting on to it. [...]

The Brontes flew the flag for female authors, even though they originally were forced to be published under male pen names because they weren’t even accepted as female novelists in the mid-18th century. In what way did you portray their feminist legacy?

When embarking on the project, I didn't think of Emily as writing or existing in a way that was like, Oh, I'm gonna be a feminist writer. I mean, you’re right, she is a literal icon and a representation of so many others, but she was also just a human being who had no voice but to write – to put her thoughts to paper. I think she just had to write and couldn't really do anything else. It was a survival thing for her: a fight or flight. It's so extreme being up there in that landscape: being in that village, and being surrounded by all that vastness and then being stuck in this house with your dad and your siblings. Being scared of going outside. As she says in the film, I just took my pen and put it on paper. There's something quite wonderfully simple about that. Just writing your thoughts down and being able to produce a novel like Wuthering Heights, and then dying…and that's your only legacy. There’s something poetic about her story. It's a fantastic source of inspiration for so many people. And Emily didn't get a good review until 50 years after she died. So she never really found solace in anything. So I hope that the film is a celebration of her in a way that she didn't really get to in her lifetime. It’s a thank you, really, to her and to a female writer who laid the groundwork for us to be able to work and have careers. (Francesca Specter)

York Mix reports that the film will be screened in York next Monday October 10th.

And talking of breakout TV stars, they don’t come much breaker-outier than Sex Education’s Emma Mackey, who seems to be everywhere all of a sudden this year, and now lands the plum role of Emily Brontë in imaginatively-titled new biopic Emily, which previews at City Screen on Mon 10th. (James Beeken)

The Paris Review features the 1986 novel Family Skeletons by Henrietta Garnett.

Henrietta Garnett was forty-one when her first and last novel, Family Skeletons, was published in 1986. She knew that her debut, a tragic gothic romance revolving around a complex constellation of family secrets, would face an unusual degree of public scrutiny: Henrietta was English literary royalty, the direct descendant of the Bloomsbury Group on both sides of her family tree. [...]

Family Skeletons begins at Malabay, a grand old house in the wilds of Ireland. Our first glimpse of the rambling lakeside estate is early one summer morning: “The dew was heavy and glittered on every twig and leaf and blade of grass. The rain, so fine that it seemed to be suspended in the misty air, shone like the frail skein of a cobweb. The air was so moist, the leaves and grass so wet, the fish pond and the lake so scheming with reflections, that the division between land and sky seemed nebulous, amorphous and indistinct.” It’s a place that “gets into the blood” of those who live there. Ever since the death of her parents, seventeen-year-old Catherine has been raised at Malabay by her uncle Pake, a taciturn recluse still haunted by the torture he endured as a prisoner of war years earlier. Barring the household staff—Mick-The-Post and her cousin Tara, the only visitor Pake will allow—Catherine is completely shut off from the rest of the world. She measures out her days by riding her beloved horses, writing fanciful stories, and attending to the rather unconventional curriculum her uncle has devised for her education (translating the ancient Greeks features heavily). Given her naïveté, it comes as no surprise that she is in love with the handsome, older, and more world-wise Tara. That he returns her girlish affection is perhaps a tad less convincing, but it befits the almost mythic structures that organize this slightly off-kilter world. This incestuous undertone, which foreshadows certain revelations to come, is just one of a handful of nods to Wuthering Heights (1847). Although less headstrong than her nineteenth-century namesake, Henrietta’s Catherine is another skittish beauty, frequently compared to the animals she so adores. When Pake discovers that the cousins plan to marry, he explodes in a rage—but the lovers put this anger down to his general eccentricity and proceed regardless. Only three weeks after their wedding, in a traumatic reprise of her parents’ deaths by drowning years earlier, Tara is killed in a boating accident out on the lake. The teenage orphan, now a widow, is distraught; she lops off her hair, takes to her bed, and descends into a “wild and desperate misery.” (Lucy Scholes)

Nation.Cymru features Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It by Dr Alice Vernon.

Her research encompasses sleep disorders such as night terrors, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, lucid dreams and sleep-related hallucinations – all examples of phenomena known as parasomnias.

Parasomnias are surprisingly common and will be experienced by as many as 70% of people at some point in our lives.

Dr Vernon said: “Over the centuries, parasomnias have had a profound effect on the human imagination, shaping both art and literature. Famous novels such as

‘Dracula’, ‘Jane Eyre’ and the Brother Cadfael mysteries all make reference to parasomnias, as does Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’.

“My research took me into the realms of supernatural and paranormal interpretations, superstition and witchcraft, alien abduction and post-traumatic shock disorder, and, perhaps most disturbingly, even murders being committed by sleeping perpetrators.”

Sonoma County Gazette reviews The Moors at Main Stage West with its allusions to the Brontë family.