{"id":647478,"date":"2026-08-20T15:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/647478\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T15:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:48:15","slug":"anya-taylor-joy-on-bittersweet-lucky-finale-and-dune-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/647478\/","title":{"rendered":"Anya Taylor-Joy on Bittersweet ‘Lucky’ Finale and ‘Dune 3’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains major spoilers for Lucky\u2019s series finale, \u201cAll Good Things.\u201d]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWith the dust now settled on Lucky, Anya Taylor-Joy<\/a> believes her eponymous character is finally living up to her nickname.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe British-Argentine actor\u2019s point has less to do with her conflicted con artist cheating death numerous times and besting her mobster in-laws, as well as the FBI. Instead, it\u2019s more about the bittersweet fact that, despite losing her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) in a fatal car chase \u2014 and ultimately severing ties with her father, John (Timothy Olyphant), a con man whose devotion to the hustle proved utterly incurable \u2014 she\u2019s at long last able to chart her own course.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the final moments of Apple TV\u2019s latest well-received limited series<\/a>, John comes to terms that his familial protege outmaneuvered his final play for the $10 million he originally skimmed from Cary\u2019s parents, Annette Bening\u2019s Priscilla and William Fichtner\u2019s Wayne. Cary re-stole the money temporarily from Lucky and John, only to leave it for his wife to handle as she sees fit, something Priscilla co-signed after killing Wayne, the sadistic driving force behind the season-long attempt to recover it.<\/p>\n

\n\tLucky could\u2019ve easily started a whole new life with the ill-gotten gains, but she opted to take her first steps toward a life free of crime by returning the repeatedly stolen taxpayer dollars to the Feds. The final images of the show find Lucky quietly fulfilling the promise her dad spent a lifetime breaking \u2014\u00a0that one day they would abandon their thieving ways, dig their toes into the sand and stare out at the Pacific.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEither personally or through somebody close to us, we all know what it is to love somebody that\u2019s not good for us. It\u2019s a lesson that has to be learned individually, and the heartbreak of it all is so relatable to me,\u201d Taylor-Joy tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cYou still feel that heartbreak because Timothy is so charming, and you so want him to do the right thing. But where we leave Lucky, she, for the first time, isn\u2019t being told who she is; she\u2019s telling other people who she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow that Lucky has been fully released, Taylor-Joy still has Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Dune: Part Three<\/a> coming out in December<\/a>. Lead actor Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet recently showered her performance as Paul Atreides\u2019s sister, Alia, with adjectives including \u201cbreathtaking, unbelievable, terrifying and amazing.\u201d Taylor-Joy laid the groundwork for her trilogy-capping role by filming an Alia cameo in Dune: Part Two (2024) shortly after wrapping George Miller\u2019s Furiosa<\/a>: A Mad Max Saga.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer Furiosa experience proved to be a frustrating one, and while she shared some of her struggles during her recent THR cover story<\/a>, she has made clear she will keep the full, gory details private for decades. By contrast, her expectations for Dune: Part Three were wildly exceeded.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDune was everything that I hoped it would be. I cannot say more wonderful things about Denis [Villeneuve]. It was so deeply inspiring to be in these really harsh elements and know that every person is doing their absolute best work because they believe, trust and adore the person that\u2019s leading the ship,\u201d Taylor-Joy says. \u201cIn the future, I hope that I never get jaded and that I still have that childlike exuberance. When I look at Denis, I\u2019m like, Oh, it\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a conversation with THR, Taylor-Joy also discusses key changes made to Jonathan Tropper\u2019s adaptation of Marissa Stapley\u2019s novel Lucky, before revealing what made her first day on set acutely emotional.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAs a graduate of <\/strong>Shyamalan Film School<\/strong><\/a>, you\u2019ve always had an interest in the behind the scenes of it all, but what made Lucky the right time to actually venture into producing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFirst and foremost, it was my first real opportunity. I\u2019m so grateful to Reese [Witherspoon] and the whole Hello Sunshine team for that. It was her who read the book, reached out to me and said, \u201cHey, I would love to co-produce this with you if you\u2019d be interested.\u201d Then, upon reading the book, I really felt like I had something to offer and to contribute. So it just felt like the perfect storm.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAnya Taylor-Joy as Lucky in Lucky.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Apple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tMarissa Stapley wrote the book with you in mind. Did she get the ball rolling on your casting? Or were Reese and co. simultaneously thinking about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tApparently, it was simultaneous. Marissa told me about her manifestation during one of my last days on set, and I was just like, \u201cWell done! Good witchery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou went from producers Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter on Lucky to Mary Parent and Tanya Lapointe on Dune: Part Three. Did you pocket as much as you could from them, especially now that you have a production company (LadyKiller)?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI always have curiosity and genuine interest. They are the most important things for me, and luckily, I don\u2019t have to try to force it. If you\u2019re genuinely interested in what\u2019s going on, you learn so much by osmosis just because you\u2019re present. People talk a lot about waiting around on set, but I love the waiting around because that\u2019s just an opportunity for a side quest to learn something.<\/p>\n

\n\tLucky pockets anything and everything in a different way. When she walks in a room, she instantly clocks all the angles and identifies anything she can grab, be it keys, cash, clothes, whatever. She\u2019s like <\/strong>Margot from The Menu<\/strong><\/a> in that respect.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah.<\/p>\n

\n\tHas your job made you pretty adept at reading a room since you always have to account for camera angles, blocking and your scene partners?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t[M.] Night [Shyamalan] once described me as a raw nerve that has no skin. I\u2019m very sensitive to energies, so I can read if somebody is having a bad day or if somebody needs reassurance in some way. I\u2019m happy about that because I\u2019d always rather see it than not see it.<\/p>\n

\n\tLucky\u2019s con-man father, John (Timothy Olyphant), raised her to be his partner-in-crime, and she eventually surpassed his mastery. For curiosity\u2019s sake, if you had to pull a confidence game in real life, do you think your acting chops would translate successfully?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThe act of being a confidence artist requires a level of cynicism that I just do not have. I have interest in fun pranks where nobody really gets hurt, but I detest the idea of ever winning because of somebody else\u2019s misfortune.<\/p>\n

\n\tLucky spends the first few episodes tracking down her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) after he made off with the $10 million that her dad originally stole from Cary\u2019s gangster mother (Annette Bening) and estranged gangster father (William Fichtner). Eventually, she learns from Cary that he ditched her in order to protect her from his vengeful mother. Years earlier, Lucky worked with the Feds to put her in prison. Cary then dies from a gunshot wound during a car case, and that swerve was not a part of the source material. Do you remember the conversation around that choice?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAbsolutely. We really wanted to center in on this relationship and why she goes to the ends of the earth to find him. The reality is both Cary and Lucky have inadvertently ended up with people that are slightly like their parents, and they feel like nobody else will understand. Cary commits such a treacherous act that we knew we needed an actor that was going to be intensely likable to be able to even hear him out. Then we thought, What\u2019s the best possible lesson for Lucky to learn from this? Cary\u2019s got to go. So it was quite ruthless, to be honest with you.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDrew Starkey\u2019s Cary and Anya Taylor-Joy\u2019s Lucky in Lucky.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Apple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tYou and Drew Starkey probably didn\u2019t work together that long, but you had a full relationship arc in that accelerated amount of time: the honeymoon phase, the breakup, the reconciliation and death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAbsolutely. Anytime Drew was on set, I joked that I was having the best time because I was clean and usually doing a flashback. Those flashbacks were happy, light-filled and joyful. And then the second he would leave, I would be bloody, running for my life and getting shot at. (Laughs.) So it was very dramatic whether Drew was there or not there. But he\u2019s very easy, and we get along really well. He\u2019s somebody that I wanted for the role immediately. Overall, I\u2019m really proud to say that we got our first choice for each one of the roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRegarding the sleazy real estate agent character in episode three, I didn\u2019t realize that your husband, Malcolm McRae, has been acting off and on since he was a kid. But given the icky place where the sequence ends up, did you partially want to cast someone who could make that uncomfortable dynamic more comfortable?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe cast all of our guest stars on the fly. We had all of our main cast, and then, as the episodes were going on, we opened casting for the other wonderful characters that we have in our show. Malcolm was doing a lot of self-tapes at the time. And if you\u2019re receiving a Malcolm McRae self-tape, the voice at the other end of it is me, obviously. So I was just watching him one day, and I said, \u201cDamn, you could be really good for this. Would you mind taping for it?\u201d And he did. Afterwards I was like, \u201cWait a second, this really works out for me. Instead of having a stranger slobber all over me, I\u2019d much rather it be the man that I\u2019m in love with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTimothy Olyphant\u2019s John and Anya Taylor-Joy\u2019s Lucky in Lucky.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Apple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, Lucky, alongside her dad, manages to circumvent the FBI and the mob to walk away with the $10 million in crypto.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s a busy girl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGranted, Priscilla did her a solid by honoring her deceased son\u2019s wishes. And while Lucky fully anticipates her dad\u2019s attempt to re-steal the money, it still hurts to see him choose the hustle over her yet again. But it\u2019s a blessing in disguise, isn\u2019t it? It needed to happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tEither personally or through somebody close to us, we all know what it is to love somebody that\u2019s not good for us. It\u2019s a lesson that has to be learned individually. Somebody can\u2019t tell you about it. You have to figure it out on your own, and the heartbreak of it all is so relatable to me. And you\u2019re right, you still feel that heartbreak because Timothy is so charming and you so want him to do the right thing. But where we leave Lucky, she, for the first time, isn\u2019t being told who she is; she\u2019s telling other people who she is.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn episode four, she and a random guy at a bar toast over their bad luck. Ultimately, do you consider her lucky even though she\u2019s completely alone and without the two people who loved her?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAnytime you have the opportunity to make your own fate, you\u2019re pretty lucky. And she made it out alive. That\u2019s pretty unbelievable [after all her brushes with death].<\/p>\n

\n\tShe says at one point in episode six that Lucky isn\u2019t her real name. In the book, her real name is Julia Mann, because John is not her biological father in the book. But I think he is her biological father on the show, as he references the death of her mother and being left with this tiny human. So what does she mean when she says Lucky isn\u2019t her real name? Is she just saying that Luciana is technically her real name? Or is there something more there like in the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNo, I think it\u2019s just that Luciana is her given birth name. Her father then gave her the nickname \u201cLucky,\u201d both as a promise, but also selfishly. I really enjoyed playing that, because parent-children relationships are so deep and so treacherous and so beautiful all at the same time. There\u2019s a huge element of Lucky that really wants to make her father proud, but the thing that makes him proud of her is the thing that she most dislikes about herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe returns the $10 million to the Feds. It was stolen from taxpayers in the first place. It\u2019s admirable that she truly wants a clean break from her life of crime. But was there ever talk of having her repay some of her victims, such as the family out in the desert or the woman whose car accident she helped cause?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe had conversations very, very early on in the writers room. There\u2019s this wonderful character in the book, Lucky\u2019s childhood friend [Steph]. We loved her, and we really tried to bring her with us. But it ended up not really servicing the story in the way that we needed. [Writer\u2019s Note: John and 10-year-old Lucky defraud Steph and her mother by claiming that Lucky is terminally ill, so I assume Taylor-Joy is alluding to a potential storyline in which Steph and\/or her mother would\u2019ve been made whole.]<\/p>\n

\n\tSo we thought about restitution, and then we just decided that the biggest score that she has to settle is with Aunjanue [Ellis-Taylor\u2019s] FBI agent character, Rand.<\/p>\n

\n\tYour <\/strong>THR cover story<\/strong><\/a> detailed some of the challenges you faced on Furiosa, so I\u2019m not going to belabor that subject any further.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThank you.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll I want to know is whether Dune: Part Three was everything you hoped it would be. Will you not have to wait 20 years to fully talk about it \u00e0 la Furiosa?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Dune: Part Three was everything that I hoped it would be. I cannot say more wonderful things about Denis [Villeneuve]. I learnt so much. I just wanted to be a sponge on that set and pick up everything in terms of the atmosphere and what it is to lead from a place of love. It was so deeply inspiring to be in these really harsh elements and know that every person is doing their absolute best work because they believe, trust and adore the person that\u2019s leading the ship. He deeply loves it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of Denis\u2019 actors strive to get him to say his catchphrase of, \u201cI deeply love it,\u201d after a take. Did you catch on to that game pretty quickly?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Immediately, yeah. I have so much love and passion for this art form and this beautiful thing that I get to do. And when I think about myself in the future, I hope that I never get jaded and that I still have that childlike exuberance. So when I look at Denis, I\u2019m like, Oh, it\u2019s possible. You can get to this ultimate place and still just be a kid who wants to create these beautiful worlds and do it at such an amazing level of quality.<\/p>\n

\n\tAre you about to head off to shoot <\/strong>The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI am leaving relatively soon for that side of the world [New Zealand], and I\u2019m very excited about it. [This chat took place July 15.]<\/p>\n

\n\tLastly, you quoted <\/strong>Night<\/strong><\/a> earlier, and I still think about his famous note to you: \u201cDon\u2019t cry your tears, cry the character\u2019s tears.\u201d Did you ever catch yourself on Lucky crying your tears instead of Lucky\u2019s tears?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOoh, interesting. [Such crying] didn\u2019t happen in front of the camera, but my dog passed away on our first day of filming, so that was hard. We were shooting all night long from 11:00 PM to 11:00 AM. And I think a big part of grief is being able to sleep through it. So it was such an interesting lesson of, Okay, you\u2019re going to be awake. Your body is going to be pumping adrenaline the whole time. You have to find a way of making this okay and being a leader here because you can\u2019t fall apart. And I\u2019m actually really grateful for that experience.<\/p>\n

\n\t***
Lucky is now streaming in its entirety on Apple TV. Read more of\u00a0THR\u2019s finale coverage.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains major spoilers for Lucky\u2019s series finale, \u201cAll Good Things.\u201d] With the dust now settled on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[13627,434,55360,18,117,273916,249865,19,1452,17,13630],"class_list":["post-647478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anya-taylor-joy","tag-celebrities","tag-dune-part-three","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-furiosa","tag-furiosa-a-mad-max-saga","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-lucky"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}