By Janet Susan R. Nepales
Anya Taylor-Joy, who was born to an Argentine father and an English-Spanish mother, has long felt that she did not quite fit in.
The 30-year-old American-English actress, who won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for her performance in “The Queen’s Gambit” (2020), once said in an interview, “I didn’t really feel like I fit in anywhere. I was too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, too American to be anything. The kids just didn’t understand me in any shape or form. I used to get locked in lockers.”
Today, the actress, who was born in Miami, Florida, while her parents were vacationing there, is also a producer and the lead star of “Lucky,” a crime television miniseries created by Jonathan Tropper and Cassie Pappas for Apple TV.
Asked how she is enjoying being both an actress and executive producer on the show, Taylor-Joy told us in an exclusive interview:
“Oh, first and foremost, it was my first opportunity to do it. And I’m so grateful to Reese Witherspoon, who is also an executive producer, and Hello Sunshine for presenting me with that. And second of all, I really felt like I had something to add here. I felt like I got these raw materials, and through being invited into the process, my brain just really got attached to little things. I was very excited about taking a genre that everybody knows, loves, and trying to turn it on its head.”
Taylor-Joy joined the project early in development and helped shape the series from different angles.
“I thought that if I could be a part of this show not only as an actor but also as a producer, I had the opportunity to learn from some of the best of the best,” she said in the production notes. “I was in the writers’ room with Cassie and Jonathan, and I was watching cuts in the makeup chair. It felt incredibly collaborative. I was included in every step of the process — and that shaped how I played her.”
In “Lucky,” Taylor-Joy portrays Lucky Armstrong, a con artist who is forced to go on the run after a multimillion-dollar heist goes wrong. Pursued by both the FBI and a ruthless crime boss, Lucky must fight for her life while searching for a way out.
The series also stars Annette Bening as mob boss Priscilla Masterson, Timothy Olyphant as Lucky’s father, John Armstrong, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as FBI agent Billie Rand. It is based on Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel of the same name.
Witherspoon reflected on her journey with the story and the book’s author in the production notes.
“We picked ‘Lucky’ for Reese’s Book Club because it has a woman at the center who ultimately saves herself. But when we adapt a book for television, it becomes a new living, creative entity. Marissa was so excited to see the changes — more cliffhangers, more momentum. When an author comes to set and sees the world in her head become physical reality — it’s magic. And this is the first time Hello Sunshine has jumped into an action world. We’re watching stunts, chase scenes, fight scenes — there’s a 23-page car chase! It’s a thrill ride from start to finish.”
She added, “Anya Taylor-Joy was the number one person we wanted to collaborate with when I read the novel. ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ had just come out, and watching her in that show — how her brain was working faster than the rest of the audience — that was exactly what we wanted for this character. Lucky is smarter than everybody, sees the entire landscape, and thinks four steps ahead. She’s a unique action star.”
When we asked Taylor-Joy how she prepared physically for the series, with all its stunts, fight scenes and running, she confessed, “I didn’t. I threw myself around quite a lot. It was a conversation I had with our first unit director, Jonathan Van Tulleken, where he said, it’s very important that Lucky is not a superhero. I want to see you run badly. I want to see you hit things. If you do something too well, I’m going to make you do it again because I want you to make it worse. And that was just an entirely different way of approaching action than I’ve ever done before. So, I hit things is the answer to that question. I committed.”
She also enjoyed working with her castmates Bening, Olyphant and Ellis-Taylor.
“Oh, they’re fabulous. I feel very fortunate to say that as a producer, we got all of our first choices. And so, it really was the Dream Team. And I think the beauty of it is I’ve always been someone who takes a lot of pleasure in watching other people excel. And then when you’re a producer on a show, and you’re watching an actor give a phenomenal performance, it’s just that much sweeter.”
We also learned that Taylor-Joy’s dog died on the first day of filming. Asked how she managed to cope with the loss, she admitted it was difficult.
“It was brutal,” she said. “I’m a ginormous animal lover. I have always been. It was just a lesson because I think an important part of grief is being able to sleep. We were on night shoots, so we were shooting from 11 p.m. to 11 a.m. So, I had no choice but to be there. It was just a lesson in gratitude and learning how to take comfort in the people around you and focus on the good things. There’s a part of me that was glad that I was doing what I was doing when that happened.”
Taylor-Joy’s husband, Malcolm McRae, also appears in the series as Eric in a brief cameo, appearing with her in a small but pivotal scene set at an upscale seaside bar.
“Malcolm is obviously my best friend, and at the time he was doing a lot of self-tapes for other projects. I was helping him with those self-tapes. Then one day we were just doing one, and I looked at him, and I was like, I would like you to audition for my show, please. He auditioned and he got it. It was so wonderful to be able to share that time with him.”
“My husband and I have always said that, if it made sense to work together, we would both love it,” she disclosed. “He felt very strongly that he had to audition and go through all the different hoops. And I’m really proud of the work he did. It made those scenes easier in some ways — because if the scene called for intimacy, I’d rather share that moment with my husband than a stranger.”
The day they filmed the scene also happened to be their shared birthday.
Janet Susan R. Nepales is an award-winning journalist and the first Filipina voting member and Associate of the Golden Globe Awards. She has been a member since 2008 and is the first Filipina to be elected to the Advisory Board. She is the author of the coffee table book “FASHION. Filipino. Hollywood. The World” and the co-author of the first FWN book “DISRUPT: Filipina Women: Proud. Loud. Leading Without A Doubt.” A graduate of UST (AB Journalism, cum laude), she is based in Los Angeles and is a Hollywood entertainment journalist and TV correspondent.
