Month: March 2021
Fans of The Queen’s Gambit: Don’t give up hope yet!
On Sunday night, one week after picking up a Golden Globe, Anya Taylor-Joy collected a Best Actress Critics Choice award for her work in Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. And during a backstage chat with the press via Zoom, she addressed repeated calls for a second season of the much-loved show.
“It is obviously incredibly flattering that people want to spend more time with characters that we care so much about and that we poured so much love into,” she said, “but we did intend it to be a limited series, so we were all quite surprised when people started asking for Season 2. That being said, never say never.”
The show, which follows chess champ Beth Harmon through the trials and tribulations of child stardom and life for a female star in the 1950s and ’60s, saw Taylor-Joy embracing chess for the role.
Asked what chess taught her about life, she said, “It’s such a beautiful metaphor. I guess that you can have a plan but you have to be able to adapt, you have to be able to pivot. …it’s important to attack but also to defend, and you have to learn when to do both. And you need all the pieces on the board. It’s not just the queen roaming around. You need every single one of them.”
“The Queen’s Gambit” just said “checkmate” to its first big awards.
Netflix’s hit chess adaptation took home two top prizes at Sunday night’s Golden Globes: limited series, anthology or TV movie and limited series/TV movie actress for star Anya Taylor-Joy. It marks the first major prizes for “The Queen’s Gambit,” as well as the first prominent award for Taylor-Joy.
During her speech, Taylor-Joy especially thanked co-creator, writer and director Scott Frank.
“Scott Frank, my god, I love you,” she said. “Thank you for letting me be part of the journey and thank you for trusting me with Beth.”
“It’s obviously wonderful that everyone has seen the show, but I would do this project again and again and again,” she went on. “I learned so much. I’m so grateful, and thank you to the audiences that have watched it and supported the character. It meant the world.”
Taylor-Joy was a double nominee at this year’s Globes, winning for her portrayal of addict and chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit,” but she was also in the running on the film side of the ballot for “Emma.” (She lost the film award to Rosamund Pike from “I Care A Lot.”)
Taylor-Joy is the first Latina to win in this category. She was nominated alongside Cate Blanchett (“Mrs. America”), Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Normal People”), Shira Haas (“Unorthodox”) and Nicole Kidman (“The Undoing”). “The Queen’s Gambit” was nominated alongside the same streamer’s “Unorthodox,” Amazon Prime Video’s “Small Axe,” Hulu’s “Normal People” and HBO’s “The Undoing.”
