Emma Laird on Going From ‘The Brutalist’ to ‘The Bone Temple’ and Picking Bold, Bonkers Roles: ‘I Don’t Want to Do Shakespeare, I Want to Play a Fish’

Emma Laird recalls a moment — not all that long ago — when she was stood on the rooftop of her apartment in Los Angeles, looking out across a picture-postcard sunset skyline and smoking a cigarette.

“It was so cinematic,” she says. “And I was crying my eyes out.”

The Brit had been on the phone to her agent, who had informed her that, despite making it to the screen test stage for HBO’s “Gossip Girl” reboot — the closest to any role she’d got after months of grinding daily auditions — the part was going elsewhere.

“And I just thought, that’s it,…