How ‘Cruel Intentions’ Sharpened Emerald Fennell’s Edge & Wit: Miramax Presents The Film That Lit My Fuse

After winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for her feature directing debut Promising Young Woman, leading up to her new film Saltburn, Emerald Fennell is as confident a filmmaker as you’ll find at this stage of her career. Her edgy dissection of class, insecurity, sex and entitlement is even more profound in her second turn, but it has been a long time coming. In fact, as she’ll tell you in Miramax Presents The Film That Lit My Fuse, the seeds were planted when she was just 11. Watch the video to get the full picture.

Fennell began her ascension as an actress in period films like Albert Nobbs, Anna Karenina, and The Danish Girl. She became a star of the BBC drama series Call the Midwife, and played Camilla Parker-Bowles in The Crown. She followed a parallel track as a writer, handpicked by Phoebe Waller-Bridge to replace her as showrunner of Killing Eve, She has written books and collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber in the stage musical Bad Cinderella, before stepping up to directing with Promising Young Woman. What sparked her trajectory? Just as she does in Saltburn, Fennell bares all in this installment of Fuse.