In a recent interview with Digital Spy promoting her upcoming film The Northman, actress Anya Taylor-Joy revealed how the difficult shoot positively impacted her performance and gave her much to work off of.
She stated that because director Robert Eggers works so hard to make everything historically and emotionally accurate, she was well supported on set as an actor.
“And I think that was something, when I first read the script, that I was really excited about because you know when you’re doing a Robert Eggers movie that if it says ‘they walk across you know, volcanoes and glaciers’ and whatever, we will be walking across volcanoes and glaciers. You’ll just be straight in it. So I think, I think we all adapted to our environment very quickly.”
She goes on to say that even though the shoot was difficult in terms of location, this only aided her performance. “I think the nature of [the filming] being difficult in terms of what we were dealing with naturally made it not hard work to play the scenes. All you had to do was exist. Like everything that’s going on around you is happening in real-time.”
The highly anticipated film The Northman is already being called one of the best films of the year– even though it has not yet been released in theaters. Based on the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, which was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it follows a Viking prince’s journey for justice and revenge for his murdered father, the King.
Ethan Hawke stars as the murdered King Aurvandill War-Raven, and Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth, the Viking Prince. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Olga of the Birch Forest. Eggers, whose previous work includes the indie hits The Witch and The Lighthouse, directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Sjón. This film will be released in theaters on April 21, 2022.