It’s a good time to be a horror fan. The genre has been thriving for years now, and one of the most hotly anticipated upcoming horror movies this year has been Mark Mylod’s The Menu. The new dark comedy features an outstanding ensemble cast, lead by The Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy. And she recently spoke to CinemaBlend about the “gift” of facing off against Voldemort himself, actor Ralph Fiennes.
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00:05I'll, uh, leave you to it.
00:08It was such a gift.
00:09Um, listen, Rafe is such a talented actor
00:12that whatever he wants to transmute onscreen,
00:15he will do that.
00:16And so, of course, he is formidable and intimidating
00:20and all of these other words.
00:21But being in a scene with him,
00:24I don't know whether it was our characters
00:26or the way that we both approach acting,
00:29I felt so comfortable.
00:30It was such a warm intimacy between the two of us,
00:33and we really took care of each other
00:35and I think genuinely relished
00:38any time we got to have those back-and-forth scenes.
00:41It felt very, um, almost like a relief
00:44because the way that Mark wanted to shoot was 360.
00:48We were all mic'd all the time.
00:50We were always improvising.
00:51And it was incredible, but it was also,
00:53you know, quite energetic.
00:55And I feel like any time it was Rafe and I alone,
00:59everything kind of calmed down a little bit
01:02and we got to just be with each other
01:04in that more intimate space.
01:07Tone is a very tricky thing to talk about
01:11and try to explain.
01:12Um, whenever I read a script,
01:16I'm always trying to picture it in my mind
01:18of how it would look.
01:19And I had no idea with this one,
01:22when I read it, how it would turn out.
01:24But there was something really exciting about that,
01:26not knowing.
01:28The thing that I did know was that
01:30we were in very good hands with Mark Milod
01:33because I think a lot of people know Succession
01:35and how wonderful,
01:38what a wonderful job they do on that show
01:40of turning very unlikable characters
01:43into people who you do somehow wind up caring about
01:47in some way.
01:49And I knew that Mark was going to be able to take this,
01:53um, really rogues gallery of despicable characters
01:56and make us care about what happens to them.
02:00And Rafe Fiennes, I think, was just, you know,
02:05he's a living legend.
02:08He's one of our greatest actors.
02:10And I could immediately picture him saying the lines
02:14as I was reading the script.
02:15But it was one thing to imagine it
02:17and another thing to actually be there and witness
02:20that he is just a force and a powerhouse
02:25and has such a way with language.
02:28And we all felt like we were sitting in on a master class
02:32because, you know, we got to sit back and watch
02:34Rafe do these really great monologues to us, his audience.