Oh, what could have been.
On Tuesday night's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Emily Blunt revealed that she almost didn't become an actor. In fact, she told host Jimmy Kimmel that she wanted to be a pop star instead.
"I could have been Britney [Spears]," she joked, noting that her dreams were short-lived because of one minor detail. "I realized I wasn't good at dancing and I didn't want to be Britney…I don't know."
Before deciding that being a musician wasn't in the cards for her, the A Quiet Place 2 star admitted that she had recorded some songs and even tried dance lessons. "I don't want to tell you too much because I feel like someone is going to find these songs," she said. "Do you want to know the name of one of them? ‘Ring It Up.' It will never see the light of day."
After getting a laugh from Jimmy, Emily assured the late night host that she didn't help write the tune.
"I can't write. I can't really sing—no, I'm just kidding," she continued. "They said, ‘I think you have a nice voice and I think that you could be a pop star.' I said, ‘I can't dance.' They said, ‘Don't worry about it. We'll teach you.' It didn't work. I tried to learn."
At the time, the Devil Wears Prada star was still pursuing acting and received some advice from one of her A-list co-stars that helped her make the right decision in the end.
"I was doing a play…my first job was with Judi Dench—yeah, the Dame—which was incredible and she was wonderful to me," Emily recalled. "And I went to her for advice because I was really, really nervous about this career that I didn't know was right for me—I didn't think was right for me—and she was like, ‘Oh no, darling. You can't do both. You can't act and do that.' She talked me out of it."
Switching gears, the duo discussed her upcoming film A Quiet Place 2, which she said almost didn't happen because of husband and A Quiet Place director-writer John Krasinski's vision for the first movie.
"We were really reluctant to entertain the thought of a sequel," she explained. "But then, John pitched me the opening of the movie—which is amazing." To really sell the idea, Emily joked that he also said, "'And you'd be an idiot not to want to be in this scene.' And I said, ‘You're right.'"
Watch Emily relive her early pop star days and reveal who John would have re-casted her with had she not signed on for the sequel in the hilarious video above!
A Quiet Place 2 hits theaters March 20.