Anya Taylor-Joy refused Disney role so she could star in ‘The Witch’: “I just had this really good feeling”

Anya Taylor-Joy has revealed that she turned down a Disney role so she could star in 2015’s The Witch.

In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine, the actress shared that she received a job offer from the Disney Channel on the same day she landed the lead role in Robert Eggers’ fantasy horror.

“I remember it was the same day I got asked to be in a Disney Channel pilot, and it was so exciting to be offered anything at all that I ran around the house like a loon,” Taylor-Joy said.

“But I just had this really good feeling about The Witch that made me willing to forego the Disney experience for the thing that felt unknown to me, the thing that felt sacred.”

Crediting the movie for shaping her early career, she added: “It gave me the cornerstones of the way I work now, which is essentially the idea that there is no hierarchy on set: you work hard, you stay on top of the shots and you don’t assume anyone else is going to do that for you.

“Your title doesn’t stop at actor – you’re a creative on this film, and that’s how you need to approach it.”

In a 2021 interview for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series, Taylor-Joy said that wrapping Egger’s film was her first experience of “heartbreak”.

“My first heartbreak was not a relationship. My first heartbreak was finishing my first job [on The Witch], and experiencing that loss,” she said.

“The loss of there was a world that existed with a group of people that became my everything for a period of time, and now it’s over. I had no concept as to how to deal with that.”

Taylor-Joy recently reunited with Eggers for his Nordic action-adventure The Northman, which also starred Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe.

The actress and director are reportedly set to reunite once again for a remake of the classic vampire film Nosferatu.

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