Emma Mackey Addresses Emily's Inaccuracies & Bronte Fan Complaints - Who Cares?

Not every biopic needs to be completely faithful to the real historical figure, and frankly, most aren't; filmmakers certainly have a habit of playing with timelines or small details to create a more sensationalized story. Sometimes, that's on purpose — "Dickinson" plays fast and loose with its time period, tossing anachronisms around while Hailee Steinfeld plays the titular poet and rides around in a carriage pulled by Wiz Khalifa's angel of death. Similarly, "Emily," a biopic focusing on Emily Brontë and directed by Frances O'Connor in her debut behind the camera, doesn't stick super closely to Brontë's real life... and according to star Emma Mackey, that's perfectly fine.

"If you wanna watch a documentary about the Brontës, there are loads and they're great. But this is a story and an interpretation," Mackey told Harper's Bazaar. "You just kind of have to roll with it."

Asked about the timeline differences between Brontë's real life and "Emily," Mackey was blunt: "Yeah, but, like, who cares? I get it. I mean, I was the same in the beginning, but in the end, it's, like, 'It's just a story. Can we all just get over ourselves?' The problem is if it was ever pitched and sold as a biopic, that would be the problem ... You just kind of have to roll with it and let it happen to you and just enjoy it in all of its imperfections and all the different rhythms and all of the broad strokes. You need to just follow it. That's the way you can enjoy it."

Mackey ultimately said that the way that she and O'Connor told the story of the "Wuthering Heights" author — whose sisters Charlotte and Anne were also famous writers, penning "Jane Eyre" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," respectively — really worked for her, despite that it took liberties here and there. One particular potential liberty is the film's "mask scene," where, while sitting with her sisters and a few male companions, she dons a strange ceramic mask as they all play a game... but when Emily says that she's possessed by the spirit of her late mother, the windows slam shut, scaring everybody. It's a strange little addition, but works in the context of the movie, and Mackey says it marks the sea change in the film overall. 

"The end result I'm quite happy with," Mackey said. "It feels like it's not stuck in a specific structure or a specific kind of filmic rule system, which I like. I like that we pretty quickly, from the mask scene onwards, blur those boundaries quite intensely and play with the genre a little bit, go towards the more the supernatural side." The film definitely takes on a supernatural bent in this scene, and clearly, Mackey felt good about this direction.

It's said that Emily Brontë was a logical, sharp, and sometimes prickly woman, and like some other writers of her time (see: Henry David Thoreau), she was also said to be extremely reclusive. "Wuthering Heights," a doomed, searing love story between Cathy and Heathcliff, is full of larger-than-life emotions, posing a sharp contrast to her public persona. So did Mackey do extensive research on the author's personality and life story, or did she forgo that because the narrative didn't strictly stick to Brontë's actual life?

"It poses challenges," Mackey said, of changing the story of Brontë's life around in some parts of the film. "I got offered the part a year and a bit before we actually started shooting, so I went in there pretty fresh. When I started researching and realized that there were a lot of historical discrepancies and a lot of things weren't factual, I sort of had to re-habituate my preconceptions of what the Brontës' story was and what Emily's story was. I'm a little more classical. I think I'd thought it was a biopic, and then when I got in there, it wasn't. In the end, I had to kind of fight against my own preconceptions of what I thought I was doing."

So what has Emma Mackey been up to beyond playing Emily Brontë? Well, if she looks familiar, it's probably because you've seen her leading performance in Netflix's quirky, thoughtful comedy "Sex Education." Mackey plays Maeve Wiley, a student with a bad reputation that has a lot more lurking underneath, and is set to complete the role in the show's upcoming fourth and final season — though, at the end of the third season, Maeve leaves the United Kingdom to go and pursue an opportunity to study abroad in the United States. Thanks to Mackey's performance, Maeve is a fascinating, eminently lovable character whose personality shows more and more as she learns to befriend and trust the other characters around her, and it definitely seems like this show opened doors for her.

Mackey is also set to appear in Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie in a still-undisclosed role — and when asked by Harper's Bazaar about working on two projects in a row, Mackey said it wasn't necessarily a conscious choice, but that it was a great series of experiences. "The Greta experience was quite singular, because it was 'Barbie,'" Mackey said, laughing. "I didn't do anything after 'Emily,' 'cause it was quite intense for me. So I took a break, and 'Barbie' was the next thing I did, and it was just such a burst of life and energy for me, and it kind of gave me hope again.

"Emily" is available to rent or buy on major streaming platforms, and "Barbie" hits theaters on July 21, 2023.