Anya Taylor-Joy's Grandmother Rates All Her Films on a "Kissy-Kissy" Scale | The Drew Barrymore Show

Ladies and gentlemen, Enya Taylor-Joy! This is... Hello! He's my man. I love him. He's my baby. Hi! He's a good boy. Um, most of the time he's a good boy. Um, how old were you when you moved to New York? I... So I... I essentially told him I was having a really bad time at school. And I told him there was a directing program in New York. And I walked downstairs and I told my parents, like, listen, this is not doing it for me. And I would like you to support me going to New York to this directing program because otherwise I'm going to run away. Which like I don't recommend. But luckily my parents were really great and they let me go. I was 14. And New York provided this opportunity to kind of like become whoever I wanted to be. And I decided that who I wanted to be had shocking pink hair. And I dyed it. And that was the first thing I did in New York. Did you love the hair? I did. It was great. I wonder how your parents trusted you because I too was out on my own at 14. Yeah. I think I'm so, so lucky with the relationship that I have with my parents. They really have been just so incredible with me always. I really feel like if I'd been born to a different set of parents, I might have ended up in a really different place. They had watched me suffer and they knew that it wasn't about not wanting to learn. I was just in a really toxic environment. And I was like, I love this thing. And if you'll let me, I want you to be a part of this as well. But I'm really feeling the call. And then they were kind enough and intelligent enough to listen. And I think having that honesty and that ability to listen is so important. Were you close with your grandmother? Yes. My grandmother is hysterical. She's about this big. And she's very happy about the movie that I'm doing now actually because she rates all of my- The Gorge? Yes. The Gorge. I saw it last night. Go watch it. What do you think? I loved it. Oh my God. Isn't it? It's very different. It's so different. What did your grandmother say? I want to hear her reason why she'll elicit you with mine. She rates all of my films based on something called the kissy kissy factor, which is essentially whether there's romance or whether I got kissy kissied. She loved this one. This one was very good for her. Is she a romantic? Very much so. Because this film is so romantic. I love Miles Teller, by the way. He's the best. And how did you guys talk about the fact that you were going to have a genre that's so appealing and exciting and heightened with action and fear and scary and all of that stuff, but then have these very kind of antithesis in tone and pace and feel with the love story? Well, I think we knew that if the love story failed, you wouldn't get to enjoy any of the rest of them. So the director, Miles, and I had it very clear that it kind of lived and died by the love story. And what's beautiful about their relationship is my character, Drossa, is a world-class sniper. She takes people out for a living that is incredibly dark. She really, really knows who she is, and she has a very playful attitude to life. And she kind of brings him out of his shell. It's the perfect explanation of why these two people work so well. It's one of them's going like, come here. So your man is a musician, right? How did you guys meet? I love him so much. Oh, yeah. I'm so lucky. I'm lucky. We met in a music studio. I do. I love him. We're born on the same day. So that was the first thing he ever said to me. He was like, when's your birthday? And I was like, April 16th. He's like, I knew it. Oh, no. This is, yeah. He's the absolute greatest. I feel like my dad once told me when I was a kid that you're not looking for another half to make you whole. But you are whole, and if you're lucky enough, you meet another whole, and then you become like a greater sum of your parts. And I just feel like I am encouraged to grow in the most unexpected and beautiful ways because he provides a soil that's like really nutritious and safe. And yeah, I just think about it. Okay. Did you and your husband actually celebrate a birthday at a break room? Yes. Now, what is a break room? Yeah. I love this. It's like a room with a bunch of stuff, and you get to pick your weapon of choice, and you just go at it. Yeah. But here's the thing. So it's actually something that my husband and I found together because particularly as a young lady, you're not really allowed to get pissed off. There's not as much grace for that when you're a girl. And I realized that I was very highly strung, and so we developed something called Fists of Fury where he would like grab a pillow, and I would just go. And like 20 seconds later, you are a different person. You feel so good, so light. And so for our joint birthday, I took him to a break bar where you just grab stuff and you can pick the picture on the wall and just go at it. It's really fun. Well, we set up a mini break room here. So we're going to go to a quick commercial.