Carey Mulligan is now evidently on board Sam Mendes’ adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Booker Prize-shortlisted “On Chesil Beach” with production set to begin as soon as late September in England.
After being linked to the role last month, The Daily Mail reports that Mulligan is already taking violin lessons in order to portray the role of Florence Ponting, a newlywed whose marriage to Edward Mayhew (and frustrations in the consummation of their Chesil Beach honeymoon) is used as a study on the sexual and social geography of pre-revolution 1962 England — a time period Mulligan should be familiar with after her breakout role in Lone Scherfig’s “An Education.”
The production is also reportedly “studying screen tests featuring a handful of British actors who could play Edward [described as] a graduate historian, who is more a ‘blokey-bloke’, as someone described him, rather than a pretty boy.”
The source material may prove to be a tricky adaptation as it’s “a minor work, and is both structurally tricky (much of the ‘narrative,’ as it were, is made up of the memories of the central couple), and extremely sexually explicit” though it doesn’t hurt that McEwan himself is adapting it for the screen and likely wrote with Mulligan somewhat in mind — he told the Guardian in May before she was linked that “the only real name that keeps coming up is Carey Mulligan. Both Sam and I think she’s absolutely delightful. I think she’d bring such warmth and grace to that part of a young girl; timid, virgin, highly educated, musician on her wedding night.”
Shooting will take place in the South of England and central London this September on the Neal Street Productions and Focus Features production, with BBC Films potentially joining.