Anya Taylor-Joy advocates for the authentic representation of female rage in cinema, challenging stereotypes and promoting emotional complexity.
The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, known for her role in Furiosa, has recently spoken about her advocacy for “female rage” during her performances. Taylor-Joy has faced requests from directors for her characters to cry on screen, but she has remained steadfast, feeling that such emotion was not suitable for the role.
The British actress firmly believes that women “have reactions that are not always delicate or clean,” which is why she has insisted on showing darker and more aggressive sides of her characters, even when they are not always written that way.
In an interview with GQ, she talked about her notoriety in Hollywood for believing in female rage, which she believes deserves to be authentically portrayed on screen. “I have developed a kind of reputation for fighting for female rage, which is strange because I am not promoting violence,” Taylor-Joy said, “but I am promoting women being seen as people.”
In Robert Eggers’ ‘The Witch,’ it was written in the script that her character would cry as she was dragged through her family’s house after being accused of being a witch. However, Taylor-Joy couldn’t find the emotion in every take.
Instead, Taylor-Joy told Eggers that Thomasin actually felt something different inside than sadness. She noted: “I finally said, ‘She’s angry; she’s freaking angry. She’s been blamed over and over again, and she’s not doing anything. We have to stop crying.'”
Furthermore, she challenged Mark Mylod when working on “The Menu,” who wanted her character to shed a single tear when she discovered she had been lured to a private dinner to be killed. Taylor-Joy responded by saying, “What planet are we living on?” before explaining that her character would rather “leap across the table and try to literally kill him with my own hands.”
When Taylor-Joy worked with Eggers again on ‘The Northman,’ the director also took her opinion into account, leading to a scene where her character hits a man with her menstrual blood to prevent him from touching her against her will, a “very strong, challenging, and memorable” choice, according to Eggers.
Despite her advocacy for “female rage,” Taylor-Joy personally feels she is not an angry person, noting: “For a long time, the only time I would get angry was on behalf of other people. I’ve always internalized this idea of ‘I’ve done something wrong. If you treat me badly, it’s because I’m the problem’.”
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