The final Fox X-Men film, New Mutants will finally be hitting theaters in April after a two-year delay from its initial release date, and the wait has been especially long for Anya Taylor Joy. Initially there were supposed to be reshoots, but they never actually happened and Disney's acquisition of Fox pushed things back even further, and Anya Taylor Joy was onboard a year and a half before the movie was even greenlit, so she's been waiting nearly six years for its arrival.
Instead of being the start of a new trilogy, which was set to have a big impact on the future of the X-Men franchise, New Mutants will close out the Fox X-Men universe before the MCU incorporates presumably new versions of the characters.
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Back during the film's production in August 2017, Screen Rant visited the New Mutants set and sat down with Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, actor Anya Taylor Joy to talk about her role in the film.
So tell us about your sword
It's awesome, it's so cool, it's so much fun. I've gotten the chance to do stunts training with it. I did a movie called Morgan? Where I got to throw a lot of punches and learn how to do all the fighting, but like hand-to-hand combat and sword combat is so much... it's just, you can't pull a sword, you just kind of have to hit it, so it's like "ah!" But it's really cool, I have a whole bunch of different ones, ones that light up, ones that are really heavy, ones that are lighter, rubber, it's just been a blast. The arm, the sword, it's pretty fucking cool. So I'm having a good time.
Are you going to try to steal it?
Um, I'm hoping he'll give me one as a wrap gift, so I’m just putting that out there in the universe.
How are you dealing with the Russian Heritage?
It's awesome. I was originally a bit worried about it because the Russian accent but I've heard personally on film tend to be very over-the-top and you can't really see beyond the accent and so it was very important to me, especially in the ways of the script is written, it's very... the dialogue exchanges are very American, and so if the accent is so thick you're not going to be in the same wavelength as everybody else and so it's important to me that, you know, Illyana's been here for 10 years, that she has a Russian twang, but that you can still understand her and it doesn't take away from who she is a person and Russian history is one of my favorite moments in history of all time, and I love Saint Petersburg, so I was really excited to do it and get a chance to be like a saucy Russian lady that doesn't take no shit, I thought I was pretty cool.
You have your little dragon friend as well, right?
Uhhhh, yes. I think fans won't be disappointed with what goes on, but it might be, uh, slightly different than what they would expect.
How do you interact with the, what do they use for, like substitute [on set]?
Stay tuned. Sorry.
Can talk about this being a superhero movie that focuses on the female characters maybe more so than the male characters?
No, it's exactly what you said, it's a really nice change. It's also very interesting because wilst it's a superhero movie and we all have superpowers, we're all kids that are growing up and interacting with each other and we're all so specific as people and as our characters that you can't really compare any of us, and so when the two girls and I first met, we were saying how wonderful it was that we weren't going to get compared to one another, which is usually the case with female actresses, you kind of get flung against each other, and we're all friends and we're all supporting each other and it's really wonderful and it's also nice because, well I'll give you an example; There was a scene where I was supposed to walk away and the camera's technically supposed to, you know, like show off my derriere a little bit, and Josh was like, no we're going to turn the camera around and Roberto is going to be the person that were all staring at, and that's like the cat nip of the scene and it's like, that's awesome, I'm really into that.
Can you say who Illyana's closest with and the cast of the New Mutants?
I think she's pretty spiky. She likes to keep herself to herself, unless she's causing trouble in some way. But the boys and her have a nice bond I think. Rahne and her sort of pass along without really any consequence and Danny's definitely an unsettling presence for her within the group
Josh sort of mentioned in that scene you're supposed to be falling out of limbo, so I was curious how much are you playing with the comic book origins of magic? Is it something that's lightly referenced, or do you get to kind of go deep into her backstory?
Well, when Josh first approached me with the role I was so excited because my brother had been a real comic book nerd and I always wanted to get into it but I couldn't read English for the first eight years of my life, so I was like "I don't understand any of this," but I can look at the pictures. And so when I first got the role I went into a comic book store and read all the comics, I was so excited about it, and I think Josh has done an incredible job of making sure that fans won't be disappointed while still keeping it firmly rooted in the real world. So it's a very interesting mix, but he's a Super Fan, so you kind of feel-good having someone that has such a deep respect for these characters at, you know, as your director.
You've been involved with lot of really great genre, The Witch is incredible and Split's great and you mentioned Morgan and this is a heavy genre influence on it, too, what is it about the genre that either draws you to it or you think is drawing you to the director?
When I first started doing interviews everyone was always like "why are you so dark? Why do you keep going back to these places?" And I'm like "dude I don't know, I just follow my characters and they tend to reside in very dark worlds," and I will say that the bracket of acceptable emotion that you're allowed to feel within a genre piece is so liberating because you just get to go in a room and scream and just be really upset and when you stretch out your emotions to, you know, the greatest length that they can go and you go home and you feel pretty nice, like you're light and you've exorcized a whole bunch of stuff. I don't know, I enjoy it. It has desensitized me quite a lot, though, because I'll watch movies and I'll be like "oh that's awesome and whatever," and my friends will just be like cowering like this and I'm like "oh no I know exactly how they shot that I know is awesome that's so much fun." Yeah, no, I like genre movies.
Congratulations on Nosferatu, by the way.
Thank you, I love Robert [Eggers], he's amazing, he's my man. I love him.
Has there ever been anything that's scared you working on horror movies?
Not scared me, but that scared my directors is I find men don't tend deal very well with crying women after you yell cut, so if you go too far in and you don't stop immediately everyone's like "oh my God, what's wrong, are you okay? Is everything fine?" I'm like "no I just went too far." But yeah, that's pretty much it. I have a good time.
Now you just troll them, right?
No, they're very sweet. They're just like "why are you leaking salt water? Stop, you'll be okay."
You mentioned sword work and we've seen you do some wire work, what's been the most grueling or complex day on set?
We had a pretty intense fight scene in because of the schedule because it's been so fast, I cannot give more appreciation to the stunt team, like, they have done incredible things with a limited amount of time that we've had and they've been so supportive and caring with me, but when you're suddenly strapped up to wires and you've only practiced it once in a warehouse somewhere and never in the actual arena and never with actors, never with anything, you're like "fuuuck... I've got to get otherwise people could get really hurt." So it's more than mental strain I think. And I'm also a perfectionist, so the only time I'll go behind the screen and actually watch the monitors is when I'm doing fight stuff and I'm very hard on myself and so Josh will be like "we've got it," and I'm like "nope, that slice isn't right, that's not right, my foot position isn't right there, I've got to go back and we've got to do it again," so the perfectionist side of me comes out and it rears its ugly head.
Charlie mentioned that you guys are all kind of in the 16, 17, 18, year range, can you talk about regressing back to that time and all the heightened emotions and what all that entails.
I love how you say regressing as if I've left that. In my life. Life is still pretty intense. It's nice because, again, we're all so specific that it's a wonderful experience to have an experience that's mirroring what's going on on-screen, so there have been moments where I'll sit down and take a moment to reflect and I'll look at everybody and I'm like "wow, we're in the exact same position," we're five relative strangers, I know Charlie from Marrowbone and I love him, but I didn't know the others before I came on to this, and we're five relative strangers that have all been flung together that need to work together to achieve a certain goal and it's kind of what's going on in the movie, so you're like "hmm, this is weirdly parallel to what I'm living right now," so I guess that's the regression part, it's just sort of living your life.
Did Josh give you any reference, like movies to watch - he's mentioned Dream Warriors, he's mentioned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining, Girl Interrupted, did he kind of give you a little watch list or anything when you came on board?
What I love about Josh is that Josh is, A, the nicest human being ever, but B, he doesn't give you a homework he just gets over-excited about stuff and so he's like "I was listening to this song when I wrote your character, and I did this and that and whatever," and he gives you a plethora of information to dig through, but not necessarily, like, gives it to you and you have to study this as if it's Dogma. The music's been great, he introduced me to Lost Boyz, which is awesome, so I'm really glad that he gave me that reference, but yeah, mostly it's musical references. It's very musical.
Can you be specific about the music stuff he recommended?
Oh yeah, the one that was most excited about was he said that when he was writing Illyana he had Youth Lagoon "Free Me", and Youth Lagoon's been one of my favorites, I don't know if you can call Trevor Powers a band, Trevor Powers is a musician, AKA, Youth Lagoon is one of my favorite humans ever, so I was very excited about the song he was listening to. Matt Kivel, um, I'm trying to think, Replacements, that kind of stuff.
What's been the experience filming here, just going around the area, it's completely insane and all the history is kind of nuts, too.
Again I think a little desensitized sometimes. We did our first day of work with this big attic scene, and we shot obviously in an attic, hence the name, and when we were up there I felt so nice and so flooded with happiness and everyone was so excited for the first day and then like three weeks later we went back for a photo shoot and I suddenly saw all the scrawls on the wall from like 1910 and someone's talking about their hanged girlfriend and you're like "fuuuck, okay, that's really dark, I'm glad I didn't know this when I was shooting in here, but it's fine." But no, I think that film crews have an ability - there's so much team effort, there's so much hard work that's going on and, pardon being so sappy, but heart, that I like to think that creepy places that you go into get flooded out with a little bit of light and you make it a little bit happier. That being said, Josh has tried to scare me a couple of times and I don't appreciate it very much. I'm "like not cool, dude. We're rolling."
Key Release Dates
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New Mutants
Release Date:2020-08-28
