Steven Spielberg is returning to the science fiction genre with ‘Disclosure Day,’ a film built around government secrets, extraterrestrial life, and the fallout that follows when the truth finally comes to light. Leading the cast is Emily Blunt, who plays Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild. Her life takes a dramatic turn after she begins displaying strange abilities she cannot explain.
Since the film explores extraordinary ideas, Blunt recently revealed that her preparation focused on something far more grounded. To understand how her character would react to such an unsettling experience, the actress immersed herself in documentaries featuring people who claim to have encountered the unexplained.
Searching For A Human Connection
In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Margaret suddenly finds herself speaking languages she has never learned and developing a psychic connection with people around her after a mysterious bird crashes into her apartment. Faced with a character whose experiences defy logic, Blunt had to make the role feel authentic.
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“I just had nothing to springboard, to base [my character on] other than watching endless documentaries about people who have experienced something and the reality of what that felt like for them,” Blunt said via DiscussingFilm, while discussing her preparation for the role.
Rather than focusing on the more sensational aspects often associated with UFO stories, Blunt paid close attention to the emotional experiences of those sharing their accounts.
The fear, confusion, isolation, and uncertainty described by the documentary’s multiple subjects became an important reference point for her performance. By focusing on those emotions, she could ground Margaret’s increasingly bizarre journey in something audiences could understand and relate to.
Following A Familiar Steven Spielberg Tradition
Blunt’s approach also fits neatly into a storytelling formula Spielberg has returned to throughout his career. Like Roy Neary in the 1977 classic ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ Margaret Fairchild begins as an ordinary person before being swept into events far beyond her understanding.
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The film pairs Blunt with Josh O’Connor, who plays Daniel Kellner, a young whistleblower attempting to expose government secrets surrounding extraterrestrial life. Together, the two characters navigate a story that blends alien mysteries with modern concerns about secrecy, surveillance, and institutional power.
What makes Margaret stand out is not the strange abilities she develops but the emotional reality Blunt brings to the role. Instead of treating the character’s experiences as spectacle, the performance appears rooted in the same questions that emerged from her documentary research.
These include: How would a person react if something impossible suddenly became real? How would they cope when nobody around them could fully understand what was happening? Those questions sit at the heart of many of Spielberg’s most memorable science fiction stories.
Based on Blunt’s comments, the upcoming project looks set to continue that tradition by placing human emotion at the center of a story about the unknown. ‘Disclosure Day’ arrives in theaters on June 12, 2026.
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