Anya Taylor-Joy Reveals She Was “Devastated” After Watching Her Performance in ‘The Witch’: “I Thought I’d Never Work Again”

You’ve heard of stage fright — now, get ready for screen fright. Anya Taylor-Joy recently opened up about being intimidated while watching herself onscreen, admitting she felt “devastated” after seeing her performance in Robert Eggers‘s The Witch for the first time.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as a part of her Emmys campaign for The Queen’s Gambit, Taylor-Joy revealed her blunt feelings towards the first screening of the film. “Rob [Eggers] showed us the film maybe two hours before the audience screening, and I was devastated,” Taylor-Joy said. “I thought I’d never work again, I still get shivers thinking about it.”

The 2015 horror movie, which is also stylized as The VVitch, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and served as Taylor-Joy’s breakthrough. But to this day, the actress recalls the negative feelings she first felt while watching her performance.

“It was just the worst feeling of, ‘I have let down the people I love most in the world. I didn’t do it right,'” Taylor-Joy continued. “And I’m quite verbose, I like to talk, I like to communicate. I did not talk, I just cried. I couldn’t handle seeing my face that large.”

Still, Taylor-Joy went on to snag a few awards for her performance in The Witch, like Breakthrough Actor at the Gotham Independent Film Awards and a nomination for the EE Rising Star Award at the BAFTAs.

While discussing her upcoming work on the podcast, Taylor-Joy also teased The Northman, her Icelandic historical thriller film with Eggers. The actress explained that she was on set for the film just as The Queen’s Gambit blew up on Netflix.

“I was in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, with Robert Eggers, filming a movie I’m very proud of called The Northman,” Taylor-Joy said when asked how she discovered all the Queen’s Gambit fan praise. “But I mean, you can’t get more different than The Northman and The Queen’s Gambit. I was isolating, alone in this apartment with nothing but my phone, and my phone was telling me information that I could not compute.”

Now, Taylor-Joy has a Golden Globe for her performance in The Queen’s Gambit, and the actress is also on track to earn a nomination at this year’s Emmys for the same program. Clearly, her first-day jitters about being jobless have proven to be the opposite of true.

Where to Watch The Witch