Anya Taylor-Joy confessed she was “grateful” James McAvoy ended up her co-star in 2016’s “Split” over an unnamed “method actor,” suggesting it “would have been a different experience” otherwise.
In a Wednesday interview with Hits Radio’s Olivia Marks, the actress reflected on M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller, in which she played a teen girl kidnapped by a man, named Kevin Wendell Crumb, struggling with dissociative identity disorder. While McAvoy’s take on the antagonist received widespread acclaim, Taylor-Joy recalled that he wasn’t originally intended to be in the movie.
“I was so grateful it was him, because originally it was supposed to be someone that’s very known for being a method actor,” she said. “And if I had been in Philadelphia with a method actor whose intention was to eat me, I think that would have been a different experience.”
As Taylor-Joy went on, she praised McAvoy for being mindful of his young co-stars, which also included Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula.
“I was very grateful to have James, who I think also understood that he had three young women with him,” she recalled. “And so, every time after a take, he would just make it a little bit lighter and was very supportive and just a general great guy.”
Watch Taylor-Joy’s comments below.
Though Taylor-Joy didn’t name her originally intended co-star, one might assume she was referring to Joaquin Phoenix, who reportedly backed out of the project mere weeks before filming began.
McAvoy commented on replacing Phoenix in a 2024 episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, where he praised the Oscar winner as “an amazing actor” and noted he probably would’ve given “a very different performance.”
“Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way,” he added at the time. “I think he ditched it two weeks before they started shooting. It was really last minute. I had a couple of weeks [to prep]. Two weeks. The script was well put together so a lot of it was clear what I wanted to do straight away. A couple characters took a little longer to find. Patricia came quick. Hedwig took awhile.”
“Split” marked the second installment in Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” trilogy, which saw McAvoy reprise his Kevin Wendell Crumb character in 2019’s “Glass.”
