Oh my god. I don't need to see that.
Hi, British Vogue. It's Anya here
and today I'm going to take you with me all the way
through my Instagram archive.
[Upbeat music]
Oh, yeah. [Laughs]
I come off so crazy,
but, OK, this photograph is the act of love
of a very dear friend,
where basically any time I do something
that I deem to be scary,
which usually has to do with like a red carpet
or just being very visible,
I need to do something ridiculous afterwards
to kind of bring my soul back to my body.
And for Emmy night, Cara very sweetly asked me
what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to Jell-O wrestle
and she filled a kiddie pool with green slime
and we dressed up in onesies and then we Jell-O wrestled.
It was a pretty even match, to be fair.
More than likely we'll have a rematch at some point.
Time is crazy.
My parents found a whole bunch of VHS tapes
and we all sat down and we watched them
and this video is proof that I was a little weirdo
from the very beginning.
I'm six years old and I am making potions.
I made a giant, like, stew of plums that I served
to my parents and all of their friends
and they ate it. It was not OK.
But, you know, they had a lot of love and a lot of faith,
maybe misplaced.
Yes, life is one long interpretive potions class, I agree.
[Gentle music]
This is a behind-the-scenes picture of Scott Frank and I
on the set of The Queen's Gambit.
He is like a second father to me and we poured our hearts
and souls into this show.
I've never given so much of myself to a character.
With Beth, I really couldn't tell
whether it was her having a bad day or me having a bad day
and that line got very blurry.
Much crying after the end of that show. Much crying.
[Relaxing music]
This picture is my favourite moment from the Met Gala.
It's Sarah Paulson and I downloading after the night
on the Met steps.
This was the first time that she showed me the trailer
for Glass, the movie that we did together,
because she had it on her phone and I hadn't seen it yet.
So we just sat down on the steps of the Met
and she showed me this trailer
and then we giggled for hours,
because she's a very funny lady.
One of my favourite memories from the Met
is the lovely Hailee Steinfeld, who I have not met yet.
She had a very long dress and she didn't see me
and she walked past and I got caught up in her skirts
and I was really going to topple straight down the stairs
and an arm just came out, grabbed me
and, like, ripped me to safety and it was Jimmy Fallon
and I was like, "Thanks." Like, wow,
that was an intense two minutes.
You know, I thought I was gonna die
and then Jimmy Fallon saved me. So thanks, Jimmy Fallon.
Oh god.
My partner at the time knew that I was very afraid
of flying. I actually had to get over my fear of flying
for work. I kind of caught it off my sister.
I saw her get really freaked out one day on a plane
and I just started copying it, essentially.
And then one day, on a way back from his work,
he surprised me and said that I was going to go
and fly a plane and this was me doing that.
And, to be honest, it actually really works.
I'm not scared of flying anymore.
My weird reaction to any kind of dangerous situation
is that I giggle like a maniacal child,
which is far more frightening for anybody that's around me
because I'm completely lost in my feeling of joy,
but other people feel like they're with, like, a devil gerbil.
[Relaxing music]
This picture is taken in Argentina, on the Delta.
Argentina means so much to me
because it's where my dad is from.
It's where the majority of my family still lives.
It's kind of where I go to completely disconnect
from the life that I've built for myself.
I got to go back for Christmas
and that was really emotional and wonderful
and I cried for a solid amount of time.
Weirdly the thing I missed the most was the smell
and it was really nice that it still smelled the way
that I remembered it.
Can you tell that that little girl's going to be an actor?
This is in my childhood home, in Buenos Aires,
and I'm dressed up like a lama, a lady, and, you know,
I'm not enjoying it at all.
I'm having a terrible time.
I was originally a very outgoing kid,
but when we moved to London
I didn't speak the language and I felt very isolated
and so I very much relied on my imagination
and then I learnt how to read when I was eight
and that completely changed my life.
From that moment on, I was never lonely again,
I always had friends to turn to.
[Uplifting music]
So this picture's really special
because I remember it was the first photograph that came out
in the New York Times for Sundance Film Festival.
Filming the movie, but also the Sundance experience,
it completely changed my life.
You know, I used to tell people
I went to Sundance and never came home,
but that's kind of the way that it happened.
This picture takes place after Thomasin awakens
in the woods and she doesn't quite know what's happened
but it all kind of goes pretty downhill from this moment on
and I can really remember shooting it
because it had rained the night before
and the earth was so damp and I loved it.
Essentially, I love lying down in dirt.
I don't know why, but people keep wanting to put me there
and I am happy to be there.
"I am the very witch, when I sleep my spirit slips away
from my body and dances naked with the devil."
That is a quote from the movie,
that is when I am terrorising my little siblings,
and what's crazy is I still remember big portions
of dialogue that I have said in films
and sometimes I'll be having a conversation with somebody
and I will say a line and then realise that it is a line
that was written and just not tell the other person
because that is semi strange.
[Relaxing music]
This is a picture from the set of The Miniaturist.
I am corseted to another dimension on this show.
What was so wonderful about The Miniaturist and, you know,
sometimes people aren't this generous,
Jessie Burton, the author of the book, she showed up
on our first day and gave me her blessing to play Petronella
and I just thought that was so sweet of her.
And she's so cool
and she really just said,
"I think you're gonna do this right
and I want you to know that I fully endorse it."
And I think that gave me a nice confidence boost.
"No one wears period costume like our ATJ does."
Aw. "She's holding her foot out as if she wants to be kissed."
That's very sweet.
I do love being in period garb because it's time travel.
It just adds another dimension to your work,
where you don't have to try so hard to imagine something
because you are already walking differently
and holding yourself differently
and it's just fun to play dress up.
[Relaxing music]
This is the first time I wore, or we created,
the Gina Gray wig that I wear on Peaky Blinders.
She's so sassy. I'm talking about the wig.
She's a sassy wig.
This was my first time on Peaky.
This was when we decided what Gina was going to look like.
The only strange thing about changing your hair
as dramatically as I do is you scare yourself in the mirror
at nighttime because you don't know what you look like.
So the amount of times that I've gotten up
in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom
and then just dropped to the floor in absolute terror
because suddenly there's a brunette
in my window. Multiple times. Like it's happened a lot.
It's kind of a miracle that I have not hurt myself
because of that.
Oh, this dress. This was for Golden Globes night.
I had this vision of green and my stylist at the time
and I had a conversation about it where
Beth Harmon is such an important person to me
and green is the colour that I associate most with her
and I just called him up and I said,
"I have to wear green. It's just right.
I have to do it."
I celebrated winning a Golden Globe
by having a giant bucket of vegan fried chicken, a boob cake
that a friend of mine had bought me, that was red velvet,
and then we watched like four chick flicks back to back
and I was with all of my best friends
and essentially we just had a big sleepover party.
It was great. It was fabulous.
"Bow down to Slytherin's princess, Anya Taylor-Joy."
I'm not sure that I'm a Slytherin, but I do think
that they're misunderstood and it would be kind of amazing
to be able to talk to snakes.
I feel like they have mad secrets and I wanna know.
[Relaxing music]
We're an interesting breed, performers,
is what I will say about this video.
This is from the film Emma.
This was such a good group of people. We all got on so well
and it was amazing because it kind of felt like we were
at summer camp the whole time that we were filming
and this is us singing a song from Les Mis.
The Emma WhatsApp group is still one of the most active
WhatsApp groups I've ever encountered.
I've never really had the opportunity to film a movie
in England with so many English people
and it just felt like being invited into a new family
and it almost felt like we were doing a play.
This video is training for Furiosa
and I am having the time of my life.
I have very different hobbies now, than I did last year,
and this was my third time trying a juicy lift 180
and I felt pretty great about nailing that one.
I'm not going to lie.
[Relaxing music]
This is a photograph that Edgar Wright sent me
from the edit of Last Night in Soho.
That's his shadow waving at me.
My favourite memory of making Last Night in Soho,
I think that's twofold.
The dance that Tomo, Matt and I got to do
with our incredible steady cam operator, Chris.
That dance was amazing because there's only one moment
that's CGI, the rest of it is all practical.
Walking around Soho at like five o'clock in the morning
when you haven't been to a club and you're fully sober
and seeing everybody that's around you
and you're dressed kind of like a '60s ghost,
it's pretty great.
I scared a whole bunch of my friends that way,
a couple of times, because they're all out at the club
and I've just started work.
This is a picture of some commandments
that I made for myself.
"Trust your feet."
It means a couple of things to me.
I used to be a dancer and in ballet
it's all about getting your foot underneath you.
So I think it was originally the idea of plant yourself
in the ground and trust that your feet will be there.
I'm fascinated by the fact that, in the before times,
people used to actually hook people off of stage
if they were doing badly, with an actual hook,
they would just wrap it around your waist and hook you off.
And I think destiny kind of does that
and your feet will lead you to where you are supposed to be.
So I think it's really important to be honest about your feelings,
not say you're fine when you're not fine
and just give yourself a break.
Was that an interview?
Was that a therapy session?
Unclear, but thank you for watching
and for sticking by with me on it
and, yeah, that was my Instagram thus far.
Crazy.
[Upbeat music]