As if being one of the fastest-rising talents in the industry wasn’t enough, with the massive success of Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit kicking Anya Taylor-Joys career career up a notch or two as well as landing her Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy wins, it turns out that she can also carry a tune.
You don’t have to be a decent singer to play a convincing one, as Rami Malek proved when he won a Best Actor Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody without tackling the vocal stylings of Freddie Mercury, but Edgar Wright had a sneaking suspicion that The New Mutants star would be able to hold her own as 1960s singer Sandy in the filmmaker’s psychological thriller Last Night in Soho.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Taylor-Joy reveals how she felt about getting up onstage in front of the cast and crew to belt out a few songs, even though she’d been cast before Wright knew she had the pipes to back up the performance.
“The first time he properly heard me sing was when we were doing the scene, and he was so gracious because he understands how I feel about characters. I just thought from an audience point of view hearing somebody bear their soul a cappella in a slower way, it adds vulnerability that makes the audience see her a bit more, and that way you care more about her as the film progresses. But then I felt really touched because after I sang the song, Edgar loved it and said, ‘We’re getting you to the studio, and we’re recording three different versions, and you’re also going to sing “You’re My World”. I was, like, ‘Wow, let’s go and do it!’ I’m endlessly grateful for the support from someone who knows and loves music so much.”
Unsurprisingly, both the acting and singing aspects of Taylor-Joy’s performance have been singled out for praise, and while Last Night in Soho is proving to be fairly polarizing among critics, the work of the ensemble isn’t one of the issues people have with the film.
