Talking to Anya Taylor-Joy about The Queen’s Gambit often feels like poking your nose into somebody else’s relationship. So intensely does she feel about her character in the hit Netflix drama, heroine Beth Harmon, it’s almost like a love affair.
“Beth is the character I’ve given the most of myself to,” says the 24-year-old actor. “I didn’t realise until I met her that she was a voice I’d had in my head for as long as I remember. I’m goofier and lighter-hearted than Beth – but we have a lot of the same struggles and at our core, we’re pretty similar. I was heartbroken when I had to stop playing her. I’m just glad I got to spend seven hours with her. If it had been a two-hour movie, I would’ve had to be dragged out kicking and screaming.”
Based on the novel by Walter Tevis (author of The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth), The Queen’s Gambit follows an orphan in 1950s Kentucky who becomes a chess prodigy, before struggling with drug addiction during her quest to become world champion. A word-of-mouth hit during the second lockdown, it has become the streaming service’s most-watched scripted series. Taylor-Joy finds its ratings mind-boggling. “I get overwhelmed quite easily,” she laughs. “My brain can’t picture more people than 5,000, so 62 million households having seen it is something I can’t grasp. When things become this successful, it’s not about you any more – it belongs to everybody. I prefer that, I think.”
The performance of her career so far came as easily as Beth checkmating an opponent. “There was no real preparation for playing Beth,” says Taylor-Joy. “The second I finished the book, she was there. I just had to set her loose when the time came.”
Set her loose she did. Beth is a flame-haired force of nature who rises from being taught chess by the orphanage janitor to jetting around the world for international tournaments. “I’m too close to her to say she’s a feminist icon but I’m grateful people are taking to her in that way,” says Taylor-Joy.
There was one crucial piece of preparation – learning how to play chess. “I’d never played a single game before,” she says. “I’m thrilled that my introduction came from such phenomenal teachers and people with such love for the game.”
Former world champion Garry Kasparov and renowned chess coach Bruce Pandolfini acted as consultants, ensuring an authenticity that has won approval from aficionados. The show has been credited with sparking a resurgence in the game, especially among women. Sales of chess sets have increased tenfold.
“It was important for me to honour the chess community and understand what I was doing,” says Taylor-Joy. “But I also likened Beth’s passion for chess to my passion for acting. It’s a calling. You answer it. Then you become obsessed and spend the rest of your life figuring out how to get better at it.”
Equally acclaimed was The Queen’s Gambit’s design – all Mad Men-esque interiors and chic mid-60s fashion. Did Taylor-Joy get to keep any of Beth’s much-coveted clothes? “Gabriele [Binder, the costume designer] and I collaborated a lot on Beth’s outfits and we became very close. At the end of the shoot, she said: ‘You know, hun, it’s all vintage, so take whatever you want.’ I thought this is incredible, I’m not a big fan of shopping and this means I’ll never have to shop again. But the costumes are currently being exhibited at a museum in Brooklyn. I need to wait a few months before I can get my clothes back.”
No spoilers, but the show’s uplifting climax sees the geeks inherit the world. “It’s a story about overcoming your personal demons and coming to peace with yourself,” says Taylor-Joy. “Only then can you open your arms and accept the love and support of others. One of the things I connected to most was that Beth was so lonely. Even though there are always people around her, she can’t reach out to them because she’s not comfortable in herself. It’s beautiful when she eventually does. We’re stronger together than we are apart.”
At the start of 2020, Taylor-Joy also starred in director Autumn de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton’s sparkling, snarky adaptation of Emma. Was she already a fan of the Jane Austen novel? Or, indeed, 90s teen comedy Clueless, which relocated the action to a Beverly Hills high school? “Absolutely to both,” she laughs. “Emma felt fated for me.”
The odd uncomfortable corset aside, Taylor-Joy had a ball as “handsome, clever and rich” matchmaker-cum-interferer Emma Woodhouse. An uproarious, all-British supporting cast combined hip homegrown talent (Johnny Flynn, Josh O’Connor) with more experienced thesps (Bill Nighy, Miranda Hart).
“I’d worked a lot in America at that point and really loved it,” she says. “But I’d never experienced being part of a community of actors who all lived in the same city. It really felt like we were a company. I’ve never done theatre but that was the closest I’ve come. I treasured that and we became firm friends. The WhatsApp group is alive and well!”
One unforgettable scene saw Emma suffer a sudden nosebleed during a moment of high emotion – and it’s not achieved with trickery. Remarkably, Taylor-Joy managed to start bleeding from her right nostril on cue.
“I didn’t know I had that talent until that scene,” she says. “As soon as my nose started bleeding, Autumn and Johnny [Flynn, who played Mr Knightley] both got as excited as me. The crew were going ‘Cut, cut!’ because they were concerned about me but us three were like: ‘What are you talking about? Keep rolling! This is unbelievable! We have to capture it on film.’”
It’s quite an ability to have. “I always joke that I’m like Liam Neeson in Taken in that I have a very particular set of skills that would render me useless anywhere else other than in the acting world,” she chuckles.
Next is Edgar Wright’s time-travelling psychological horror Last Night in Soho, which arrives in cinemas next April. “It’s very different to Emma and The Queen’s Gambit,” says Taylor-Joy. “When people see it, hopefully they’ll understand why I found it difficult to work out who I was after shooting the three projects back-to-back.”
Last Night in Soho also features the last performance by Diana Rigg, who died in September. “She was such a spitfire,” says Taylor-Joy. “I’m so sad that she’s gone but I know she was very proud of our film. She had a wonderful friendship with Edgar that you’ll probably be able to see on screen.”
Taylor-Joy describes herself as “a mutt of different nationalities”. Born in Miami to a Zambian-British-Spanish mother and Scottish-Argentinian father, then schooled in London, she’s admitted to feeling like she doesn’t fit in anywhere: “I was too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, too American to be anything.”
I wonder if her penchant for period roles might be partly because she feels like she was born out of time too? “I feel like I was born off the planet,” she laughs.
This has been something of an annus mirabilis for Taylor-Joy, although she’s aware how strange that sounds. “It’s difficult to celebrate that too much when the world is in the grip of a pandemic,” she says. “But it has been wild. I’ve also been strangely grateful for the space it’s afforded me. Since I started working in my teens, I’ve never stopped to take stock of what I’ve achieved. The first lockdown was the first time I was able to just sit and reflect on my experiences, not just chuck them in a box to deal with later. At the speed I was going, I wouldn’t have gotten to that box until I was 65.”
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