Anya Taylor-Joy reveals she almost quit acting; doesn’t rule out second season of ‘The Queen’s Gambit’

Anya Taylor-Joy recently revealed that she almost quit acting before landing her Golden Globe-winning role as Beth in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.

Anya tells Elle Magazine that close friend and Emma co-star, Mia Goth, convinced her not to give up.

“I had been working back to back — just before Emma, I’d done two projects at the same time, and I was going through some emotional relationship stuff.  So at the beginning of 2019, I was just really broken and frightened of everything, and Mia and I were driving back from rehearsal,” she recalls.

“I turned to her and said, ‘I think I’m going to quit acting, I don’t think I can do this,’” she continues.  “And I’ve never seen Mia look so worried in my life.  She was like, ‘But…that’s what you do.  You can’t not…what are you talking about?’  I was like, ‘I think I need to back out now and just let it be and try to take care of my heart.’ And she was like, ‘No, that would be really bad. You can’t not have the thing that is your oxygen.’ I’m really glad she said that.”

Anya also didn’t rule out another season of The Queen’s Gambit.

“It would be silly of me to go, ‘There’s never going to be a second series,’ and then I’m 40, and [director Scott Frank is] like, ‘Yo, how do you feel about this? You want to go back?’,” she mused.

As for what she hopes Beth would be up to, says Anya, “I hope she starts doing things for her own enjoyment. I’d like Beth to pick up Benny and spend some time with him in Russia, just the two of them being snobby intellectuals together, and I hope she has a Bowie phase.”

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