Workplace romances are notoriously tricky: not only do you have to spend a lot of time with your partner, but you also have to leave all of your personal issues at the door when you enter the office – and find a way to deal with the fact that all of your colleagues have an opinion (whether they air it or not) about your relationship.

So it’s understandable that Emily Blunt was unsure how things would go down when she and her husband, John Krasinski, decided to work on their first feature film together.

Speaking to Vanity Fair about The Quiet Place, Blunt explained that Krasinski was obviously excited when he got hold of the script for the project – and that she encouraged him to not only rewrite the first draft into a “metaphor for parenthood”, but to sign up to direct it, too.

At no point did she consider it being a marital collaboration – until she read his version of the story, that is.

“I had this overwhelming feeling of ‘I don’t want anybody else to play this part,’ ” recalls Blunt. “I said, ‘Would you feel weird if I did the movie with you?’ And he broke out into this sort of ecstatic smile. I felt completely sure about it in a way I hadn’t before.”

She adds: “I had concerns that we might kill each other, just gently throttle the life out of each other during the process.”

Krasinski, of course, has seen his wife appear in films before, but he admits that it was an entirely different experience working alongside her.

“The air changes in the room when she starts doing what she does,” he tells the magazine. “It’s so honest and so pure and so powerful. It’s like a superpower that she can just unlock and do so specifically with not many attempts.”

Continuing to honour his wife’s phenomenal talent, Krasinski adds: “For me, I love acting, and I’m so lucky to be doing it. But she’s on another plane. This weird intersection happened while filming where I totally forgot I was her husband.

“I was just watching her performance and was lucky enough to be in the front row.”

Of course, Krasinski has always been a fully paid-up member of the Emily Blunt Fan Club, from long before they ever met – and it all stemmed from his near-obsession with The Devil Wears Prada.

As he told Glamour last year: “Before I met Emily, I had seen that movie 75 times – because it’s on TV all the time – so it’s one of the only movies that if you’re channel surfing and you land on that, you have to watch the rest of it.

“Embarrassingly, I think we had only been dating a couple weeks, and she stopped by…and I didn’t know she was stopping by, so when she opened [the door and came in], I quickly flipped the channel. I’m sure she thought I was watching something completely inappropriate, and I actually chose to let her believe that than know that I had been watching The Devil Wears Prada.”

Krasinski added: “Later in our relationship, she asked if I had seen The Devil Wears Prada and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘How many times?’ And I said, ‘A lot.’ She said, ‘What’s a lot?’ And I said, ‘75 times.’

“I’m lucky enough that she stayed with me and didn’t realise that she had really married her stalker!”

Of course, Blunt and Krasinski aren’t the first to make the best out of a workplace romance: according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com, which polled over 7,000 workers, 38% of workers said they have dated a co-worker at least once over the course of their career. Meanwhile, 37% said their office romance led them to the altar.

And, while workplace relationships can “often [prove] disastrous”, Dr Tina Tessina tells The Grindstone that there are a plethora of emotional benefits to dating a colleague.

“The office gives you a chance to actually get to know and even bond with a person before declaring your interest. Working side by side with someone daily, seeing him or her under pressure, commiserating over problems and congratulating over wins gives you a portrait of the person on the inside as well as the outside,” she says.

“The couple develops a relationship ‘infrastructure’ in an organic, natural fashion, as opposed to forcing it. These relationships often last a long time, because they’re reality-based.”

Images: Rex Features