‘Sense and Sensibility‘ actress, Emma Thompson opened up about her divorce from Kenneth Branagh. The actress has been promoting her new Netflix project, ‘Matilda The Musical, which will release on Netflix this 25 November 2022. The Academy Award winner plays the stiff-strict Miss Turchbull in the musical. Besides discussing the Roald Dahl adaptation, the actress relived the dark days of her divorce.
In 1995, Emma and Kenneth Branagh announced that they were separating. It was much later discovered that Mary Shelley’s novel based ‘Frankenstein‘ actor and director was having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter, who was playing Elizabeth Lavenza in the movie. While talking with the New Yorker, Thompson exclaimed how “utterly, utterly blind” she was to her husband’s extramarital affair. Thompson took us down memory lane relaying details of the shattering experience of her failed marriage.
Emma Thompson And Kenneth Branagh’s Painful Split
Emma met the actor-director Kenneth in 1987 while filming the television series ‘Fortunes of War’. Two years later, the couple got married. The director cast the actress in many of his productions and they were called the “Golden Couple” by the British press. Later in 1995, the couple announced their separation. They stated their opposite schedules as the reason at the time. However, it was later revealed that the director was having an affair with the ‘Harry Potter‘ actress, Helena Bonham Carter.
Thompson revealed to The New Yorker, she was “humiliated, in part by her own stupidity”. The couple was very private about their relationship and they had not disclosed their split to the media at the time. “I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” she said. Thompson compared to shattered dishes and added, “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.” Further in the conversation, Thompson told about the sunshine that brought light to her dull days.
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Emma Thompson’s Knight In Shining Armor
When the separation of the two actors was still under wraps, Thompson was filming for ‘Sense and Sensibility’, for which she won an Oscar. It was then she met her future husband, Greg Wise. Both Greg and Thompson were in the film. The actress shared how she felt in those days: “I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.” Greg helped Thompson in her difficult times.
Thompson admitted it was Greg who “picked up the pieces and put them back together.” In 2003, Greg and Thompson married in Dunoon, which is one of the favorite places of the actress in Scotland. The couple is still together and has two children. After his divorce, Kenneth got into an official relationship with Helena and was together with her till 1999. In the same year as Thompson, Kenneth married the art director Lindsay Brunnock.
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