When Anya Taylor-Joy first read the script for Thoroughbreds, she knew she had to play the lead role of Lily in the film written and directed by Corey Finley. “I heard Lily so, so clearly,” Taylor-Joy says. “It was clear Corey and I wanted to make the same movie.” Shot in a Massachusetts suburb in just 22 days, the comedic thriller follows Lily, a straight-A student who reconnects with her childhood friend Amanda (Olivia Cooke) when her mother hires Lily to tutor her. “They have this toxic, bizarre female friendship,” Joy says of the characters, who start plotting the death of Lily’s overly harsh stepfather. The film also stars the late Anton Yelchin, who, in his final performance, plays a drug dealer in his late 20s. Here, Taylor-Joy talks about her offscreen chemistry with her costars, and how she prepped for her darkest role yet.

How did you end up signing on for this role?
It was the first script where I immediately called my agent and was like, “How do I meet [the director]?” I was desperate to be part of the project. I knew Olivia was attached, but I didn’t know to which character. I only had eyes for Lily. After that, Corey and I met up for coffee and really vibed, and it came together really quickly. A day after I finished Barry, I started shooting Thoroughbreds.

What about Lily spoke to you immediately?
I think I’m very instinctive about my characters. When I hear their voice, or when I feel I belong to them or they belong to me, it’s a kind of a tangible feeling. From a performance point of view, I was very intrigued by the idea of having to work from the outside in, rather than the inside out. When you first meet Lily, she is this very pristine, porcelain individual who is presenting a front to the world. She is trying to achieve this Instagram-level of perfection that isn’t real. So I was really intrigued by the idea of presenting people with this very well put together facade, but as the movie went on, stripping away the moral insulation levels and seeing the messy, chaotic, raging person beneath.

Does Instagram-level perfection annoy you?
Instagram in its best light is a fun way of keeping up with your friends and expressing yourself. In a negative way, it’s presenting the best version of yourself at all times that only needs to exist within a 30-second clip or image. So it doesn’t show you a real person who has ups and downs. Especially in regard to Lily—she’s so angry she can’t achieve that. She can’t be as perfect as these images. It breeds a really horrible sense of insecurity that can drive her to do some pretty dark things and harbor dark feelings within.

Have you ever played a character as dark as her before?
No, most of my characters, despite having a lot going on underneath, have been reacting to external circumstances. While I think Lily, not only is she a product of this Instagram society and extreme wealth, she’s just reacting to her darker urges and how the urges are manifesting. And having that kernel of evil within you, growing, festering, it was something I was intrigued by as a performer. My characters are real people for me, so as we were shooting the movie I was defending Lily the whole time. When crew members were like, “God, she’s such a bitch,” I’d be like, “No! You have no idea where she’s coming from, you don’t understand. She’s completely justified.” It was only after filming finished and I started leaving her behind that I realized I’d been inhabiting a very toxic skin for a month.

In what ways did you inhabit her? Did you start making Lily-like choices on set and in real life?
I’m so glad I’m not a method actor, but even so, I firmly subscribe to the idea that while I’m still always Anya, I’m living with Lily for that month. Certain personality traits will come through. With every character I play, it’s like having a different roommate for a time, I adapt to allow her to fit inside myself. For Lily, that meant that for my friends and family I dropped off the face of the earth because Lily does not have a support network. To be able to inhabit that skin every day, I felt like I couldn’t have my own support group taking care of me. I didn’t want people to see me when I was “with” Lily.

It’s like if you come home and your best friend is crying on the couch, and they’re not your feelings, but your heart is breaking because you’re seeing someone you love in pain. That’s where I approach it from, character-wise. I guess it’s not quite a stable way to live [Laughs]. I feel for my characters. By the end of the movie, I’m scared of Lily. My imagination has always been overactive, so I’m happy there’s a job where that’s actually useful.

Was that very intense for you?
It was so fast and intense, and it mostly takes place in that one house. During filming we lived three minutes away from it, so the shooting experience mirrored the intensity of what these two young women were going through. The two of them have been estranged for a while. Then they become obsessed with each other in a short intense period of time, and we shot it in a short period of time, so that added something to it. But Liv and I had to treat each other really kindly on set, because Amanda and Lily have such a bizarre toxic, obsessive, almost tender relationship. We had to be very kind to each other and respect each other’s processes. I don’t think we could have survived the movie if we were Lily and Amanda the whole time.

Did you know Olivia before working with her?
Even though we hadn’t physically met each other, we were both at Sundance the same year. We were peripherally aware of each other, so it made it all the more special to be able to return to Sundance together for this film. I’ve been lucky to have incredible chemistry with a lot of actors, but with Olivia it was something on a different level, it was almost like we were completely physically, mentally, and emotionally aware of each other at all times from the first time we met. I would tuck my hair behind my left ear, and she would be doing the exact same thing. By the end of the first shooting day we became symbiotic, almost. It was this bizarre energy. We were always coiled around each other. Two years later it hasn’t really gone away, we still move in tandem. I believe things happen for a reason, and I think there was a reason it was Olivia and I who did this film together.

Is there any special memory from set that you two share?
We were shooting a scene in the wine cellar together very late at night, and at around 2 a.m., for some inexplicable reason, the door to the cellar locked and we couldn’t open it or continue doing the scene. So eventually we had to wake up the one locksmith, at 4 o’clock in the morning, to come and open the door so we could finish the scene. That was an intense moment. Another thing is there is this swing set behind the house. When things were getting emotionally difficult, I would just go out and swing. There was one time when I was dressed in all white, and it was really dark, I was swinging and Olivia thought I was a ghost. She was standing there scared, and I totally f—ed with her for a while.

What was it like working with Anton?
What I keep saying is that it’s difficult to talk about him as a person because he’s my friend and I miss him and it’s hard. Going on a press tour and having strangers talk about someone you love so much is a difficult thing to experience. But what’s been beautiful about this experience is that it’s not difficult to talk about him as a performer because he is so incredible. He has an ability to pick weird, quirky characters and imbue them with so much heart that you’re rooting for them. He has a truly beautiful soul. It’s been incredible to tour this movie around the country and see how unanimously loved and missed he is. In this film he took a character who, on the page, could have been quite a minor character in the hands of a lesser actor. And instead, Anton’s character is arguably the moral compass of our movie. He’s playing an older man who has had sexual relations with girls who were too young, so the fact that he manages to get you to root for him and think he is the best person in the movie… it’s all him, man. The movie is wonderful, I think he would be proud.

On such a quick shoot with loaded days, how would you guys unwind after set each day?
The cast and crew did a lot of karaoke in Cohasset. Despite the fact that it is so charged, Corey made an interesting point: Apparently on comedy sets people are more brisk with one another because the subject matter is light, but with darker films people are more gentle and kind to one another because you’re going to dark places and are emotionally vulnerable. So it was being cognizant of the fact that we were touching very dark subject matter, and everyone wanted to take care of one another. I’m Latin, I like hugs, so with every movie I’ve ever done, I start off giving hugs to everyone. Indefinite hugs.

Source: W Magazine

The actress, who last year took home the Chopard trophy for acting at Cannes, stars in “Thoroughbreds” alongside Olivia Cooke and Anton Yelchin.

“I’m very much a people person,” begins British actress Anya Taylor-Joy, upbeat and immediately chatty over the phone from Los Angeles. “I really trust my instincts when I meet somebody, and the second I met Cory, I just adored him.”

That would be Cory Finley, the director of “Thoroughbreds,” in which Taylor-Joy stars alongside Olivia Cooke. The dark comedy-thriller premiered at Sundance in 2017, and on Friday had its limited release. The film, Finley’s feature directorial debut, has garnered rave reviews for its stars’ performances of two misguided upper-class teens in Connecticut who hatch a murder plot.

“It was so witty and sharp, and superdeliciously dark and nasty,” Taylor-Joy says of the script, which she read while filming the Barack Obama biopic “Barry” in New York in 2016. “And the fact that it was between these two women that were just continuously circling each other and manipulating each other through dialogue, I just thought it’d be really fun to play.”

A day after wrapping “Barry,” she was in Massachusetts filming “Thoroughbreds.” She spent two days with Cooke hashing out their characters’ back stories, which helped to build their chemistry on-screen.

“The dialogue is so unrelenting and Olivia and I are so on top of each other with it — it’s very quick-paced — that by the end of that first day we were just so physically and emotionally aware of one other, and we became quite symbiotic actually, and it’s something that hasn’t gone away,” she says. “We still have this thing where when she moves, I move. I step with my left foot forward, she does the exact same thing at the same time. And I wonder if it will ever go away, but it definitely worked for the movie.”

Taylor-Joy describes their characters as “toxic.” In one scene, Cooke’s character shows Taylor-Joy’s her method for crying on demand, a manipulation tactic.

“Olivia and I both tried it, I don’t think it’s an actual thing, I think you just sort of have a panic attack because you’re not really breathing, so rather than having tears come out of your eyes you’re just like, ‘I’m going to die,’” says Taylor-Joy. “That scene actually comes from when Cory was acting in college. He had a couple of friends who used to boast that they could cry on cue, and this is how they did it — but I don’t think there’s much truth in it.”

While the two girls are the stars, the movie also features Anton Yelchin in a supporting role, his last prior to his unexpected death in summer of 2016. The film is dedicated in his honor.

“It’s very difficult to talk about him as a person, because he’s my friend and I deeply miss him,” says Taylor-Joy. “But from a professional point of view, I can say that he was unrivaled in his ability to bring so much energy and enthusiasm. He’s just such a lover of film, so the second he got on set we all just fell in love with him, both as a person but also we’re in awe of him as a performer. And he took a character that when I first saw the script, Tim [Yelchin’s character] in the hands of a lesser actor could have been far more of a minor character, but…[Yelchin] has an incredible ability to imbue his weird, sort of strange characters, with a lot of heart.”

Taylor-Joy, who broke onto the scene with her lead role in A24’s horror film “The Witch” and M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split” last year, won the Chopard Trophy award for promising young actors at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. This year promises to be just as eventful: she has five films coming out between now and the beginning of 2019.

“Dude, I know, it’s crazy to think about,” she says. She’s also filming period film “Radioactive” with Rosamund Pike, and is slated to star in Kristin Scott Thomas’ directorial debut, “The Sea Change.”

“I’m very instinct-character-driven,” Taylor-Joy adds of her choice of projects. “I’ve never made the decision to go for genre, or films that are darker — it just so happens that the worlds these women that have called to me have inhabited are dark worlds. I just follow my characters wherever they decide,” she adds. “And do they inhabit a world I’m interested in exploring, and then how awesome is the director? If he said jump, would I? That kind of feeling.”

Source: WWD

On the heels of this morning’s news that Gore Verbinski has dropped out of directing Fox’s long-developed Gambit movie, the studio has revealed a new slate of release date shakeups, giving Gambit, Untitled Deadpool Sequel, and The New Mutants new release dates.

Good news first, Untitled Deadpool Sequel has been bumped up by two weeks and will now land in theaters on May 18, 2018 instead of June 1. Ryan Reynolds will return as the foul-mouthed vigilante alongside Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, and (cringe) T.J. Miller as Weasel and newcomers Josh Brolin as Cable and Zazie Beets as Domino. The new release date puts Deadpool 2 a week ahead of the Star Wars box office domination that’s sure to come with Solo: A Star Wars story, a smart move considering the Star Wars films have proven to have long legs. Deadpool will now return to theaters up against Sony’s horror pic Slender Man.

Now the bad news. Josh Boone‘s horror-tinged take on The New Mutants is getting a major bump back on the schedule and will now land in theaters 10 months later than originally scheduled. The film moves from April 13, 2018 to February 22, 2019. Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams and Charlie Heaton star in the YA X-Men spinoff about a group of diverse teenage mutants kept in a research facility against their will. The shift prevents Fox from having two superhero films in theaters at the same time overseas, but the significant bump suggests that there are larger factors at play, either because the film needs more work before it’s ready for audiences or possibly due to strategy or fallout surrounding the Disney-Fox deal. Per The Tracking Board, the film tested OK, but the studio wants to rework it to be scarier in the wake of last year’s landmark year for horror.

Finally, there’s the Gambit movie, which has seen a tortured pre-production process, losing directors Doug Liman (American Made) and Rupert Wyatt (War for the Planet of The Apes), and as of this morning, Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean). The Channing Tatum vehicle has been pushed from the recently set February 14, 2019 to a summer slot on June 7, 2019. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the film has a “heavy comedic tone as it revolves around a heist” and the thinking is that it’ll do better as a summer Marvel movie.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is still slated to hit theaters on November 2, 2018.

For more of the latest of Fox’s growing X-Men verse, check out our recent coverage in the links below.

Source: Collider

After breaking out in his psychological thriller “The Witch,” Anya Taylor-Joy is looking to reteam with director Robert Eggers on his new take on a cinematic classic.

Sources tell Variety that the “Split” actress is in negotiations to star in Studio 8’s remake of “Nosferatu.”

Eggers is writing and directing the pic. The 1922 silent movie followed the vampire Count Orlok of Transylvania, who wants to buy a house in Germany and becomes enamored of the real-estate agent’s wife. It was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and Werner Herzog directed a 1979 remake.

Chris Columbus and Eleanor Columbus will produce.

Eggers has already signed a deal with Studio 8 and is attached to direct “The Knight” for the studio. Jon Silk brought the “Nosferatu” project to Studio 8.

Eggers wanted to reteam with Taylor-Joy on the film early in the process, but after she became a bona fide movie star in M. Night Shyamalan’s hit “Split,” the young actress’ schedule has filled up. She is currently filming Josh Boone’s X-Men film “New Mutants” and is also signed on for the “Split” and “Unbreakable” sequel “Glass,” which also stars James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Taylor-Joy is repped by CAA and Troika.

Source: Variety