Anya Taylor-Joy Reveals the Drew Starkey Role That Led Him to Lucky

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Anya Taylor-Joy knows the exact moment she knew Drew Starkey was the one.

To play her husband in the limited series Lucky, that is. And for her, all it took was checking out his work—although, as she admitted, it wasn’t his role as the unpredictable, often volatile Rafe Cameron in Outer Banks that caught her eye.

“To make Drew blush for a second, it was Christmas time and I was watching Queer,” Taylor-Joy told E! News in an exclusive joint interview with Starkey. “I probably made it 15 to 20 minutes into that movie, and I paused it, and I called everybody—activated the phone tree—and I was like, him, only him.”

The Queen’s Gambit actress, who stars as the titular character and is an executive producer on the Apple TV series, added that she told the production team, “‘I don't want to hear anybody else's name. He has to be Cary. I don't care what we have to do, we got to get him.’ And we did, which was thrilling.”

Although, as Starkey, recalled, there weren’t extensive negotiations to get him on board for the adaptation of Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel. As he put it to his costar, “Didn't take much. You hopped on and I was like, I’ll do it.”

Apple TV

Still, casting the right person to play Cary was crucial. After all, beyond being Lucky’s husband and quite literal partner-in-crime, it’s his disappearance that sends Lucky on the run, with the FBI and Cary’s mobster mom Priscilla (Annette Bening) on her tail.

So, for Taylor-Joy, joining forces with Starkey was like striking gold. (Or, like in Lucky and Cary’s case, finding a bag of stolen money.)

“I think when you have a gut feeling about somebody, it's always so wonderful,” she explained, “and then you get to meet them, and you're like, ‘Oh, wow, this has even exceeded my expectation of what this experience is going to be.’”

Lucky debuts with a two-episode release on July 15. For more books making their way to the screen, keep reading…