Can you picture Anya Taylor-Joy waving her wand around in between re-runs of Hannah Montana and gleefully declaring that “You’re watching Disney Channel”? That fever dream could have been a reality if it weren’t for one Robert Eggers.
One of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Women Of The Year for 2022, Taylor-Joy told the magazine she confirmed her breakout role in Eggers’ 2015 film The Witch on the same day she was offered an undisclosed Disney pilot. It’s unfair to try and figure out which decision would have given her a brighter future but it’s safe to say that her trajectory towards global recognition would have looked wildly different if she’d picked the Mouse House.
Taylor-Joy admitted the decision wasn’t easy:
“I remember [the day I booked The Witch] was the same day I got asked to be in a Disney Channel pilot, and it was so exciting to be offered anything at all that I ran around the house like a loon,”
In the end she went with Robert Eggers’ critically acclaimed debut feature film about a young woman seduced by black magic in 1630s New England, saying “I just had this really good feeling about The Witch that made me willing to forego the Disney experience for the thing that felt unknown to me, the thing that felt sacred”. It wasn’t the safe bet, but the gamble paid off.
The Witch was a hit, with critics lauding Taylor-Joy’s leading performance. This positive response seems to have come as a surprise, as she explained:
“I thought I’d done a really bad job, and I saw myself failing miserably with this dream I’d had for such a long time. I guess I’m not always the best judge of my own work.”
Taylor-Joy has since become a recurring collaborator of Eggers, though her next big-screen role will take her to Nintendo’s Mushroom Kingdom where she’s voicing Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
