Award-winning actress Emily Blunt and I are both stutterers.
You probably don’t know that since we earn our living by speaking.
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“Are you cured?” I ask Blunt.
“Are you?” She responds.
None of us is cured. But it was much worse for both Blunt and me when we were young.
“It was emotional because it was terrifying,” Blunt says. “I mean, you’re just gripped with terror being a stutterer most of the time.”
Even now, Blunt says she avoids proposing movie scenes or even saying her name on the phone.
But Blunt rarely stutters when she acts. Playing another character often allows stutterers to be fluent. It’s why we rarely hear movie stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, or James Earl Jones stutter. But they are stutters too.
“We have to de-stigmatize this thing [stuttering]. Nobody talks about it,” Blunt tells me. “Everyone’s got something. That’s just our thing.”
I’m glad I am able to speak more freely now. In the video above, Emily Blunt and I discuss how we deal with our problem.
If you’d like more information about stuttering, I list several resources below:
https://www.stutteringtreatment.org/
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/