Anya Taylor-Joy ate Nicholas Hoult's leftovers while shooting The Menu
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Director Mark Mylod's dark comedy The Menu (out Nov. 18) stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult as a pair of diners at a very special event organized by Ralph Fiennes' famous chef.
"A couple go to a very exclusive restaurant on an island for an experience of a lifetime," says Taylor-Joy, star of Last Night in Soho and The Queen's Gambit. "Very quickly, you realize that things are not exactly as they seem and madness descends. It's a pitch-black satire with horror elements."
The actress was attracted to the movie by the screenplay, written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, and her inability to predict the plot's twists and turns.
"As somebody who reads a lot of scripts, and watches a lot of movies and television shows, I usually can guess where something's going, what the ending's going to be," she says. "When I read this script, every time I turned the page I was surprised, and had no idea where it was going to go."
Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures Anya Taylor-Joy in 'The Menu'
In the film, Hoult's character Tyler is a diehard foodie who can't wait to sample the food prepared by Ralph Fiennes' Chef Slowik. Taylor-Joy's Margot is much less impressed by the restaurant's fancy cuisine. As a result, while Hoult and other cast members ate take after take, the actress rarely joined in with the on-camera noshing, and had to leave her plate of food untouched.
"I was hungry and waiting for lunch and everybody else was eating constantly throughout the day," she says, with a laugh. "I'm also somebody that gets 'hanxious,' I get very anxious when I'm hungry. So, sometimes I'd have Nick's leftovers, if there were any."
Despite this, the actress has fond memories of the shoot for the film, whose starry cast also includes Hong Chau, John Leguizamo, Aimee Carrero, Janet McTeer, and Judith Light.
"We all got on so well," says Taylor-Joy. "Something I think is really beautiful is, usually, then the camera's not on you, people will retire to their trailers, or go and rest, because the days are long. And all of us just stayed on set, pretty much the whole time. Mark liked to do this thing where the camera was constantly moving around us, so we were constantly improvising, or if it was a close-up on someone else, we just had front row seats to brilliant performances from wonderful people. So it was a very supportive environment — we would clap after takes, and the WhatsApp group is highly alive and well."
Searchlight Pictures
The actress has just wrapped the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa and is about to start preparing for her next film, action-love story The Gorge, which is directed by Scott Derrickson and co-stars Miles Teller.
"I start training for that next week, so no rest for the wicked," she says. "But I am really excited about it and I'm very excited to work with Miles. I think he's a phenomenal actor and I think we're going to have a lot of fun with that one."
The Menu is served in theaters Nov. 18. Watch the film's trailer below.
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