<\/p>\n
Anya Taylor-Joy has admitted she was relieved to hear James McAvoy<\/a> had replaced an actor in Split<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>known for his intense methods.<\/p>\n The actress, who is currently promoting her new Apple TV+ show Lucky<\/em>, reflected on M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s<\/a>psychological thriller<\/a> to Hits Radio\u2019s Olivia Marks. In an early role for the Emma <\/em>star, she played a teenage girl kidnapped by a man struggling with dissociative identity disorder. <\/p>\n James McAvoy played the role of Kevin, for which he earned almost universal acclaim. But, Taylor-Joy revealed that he wasn’t always the intended actor for the role.<\/p>\n \u201cI was so grateful it\u00a0was him, because originally it was supposed to be someone that\u2019s very known for being a method\u00a0actor,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd if I had been in Philadelphia with a method actor whose intention was to eat me, I\u00a0think that would have been a different experience.\u201d<\/p>\n The Furiosa <\/em>star also praised the Scottish Atonement <\/em>actor for how mindful he was of the young women who were playing his victims, Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very grateful\u00a0to have James, who I think also understood that he had three young women with him,\u201d she told the popular celeb interviewer. \u201cAnd so, every\u00a0time after a take, he would just make it a little bit lighter and was very supportive and just a general great guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Anya Taylor-Joy didn’t name the method actor, but many presume she is referring to Joaquin Phoenix<\/a>. The Oscar-winning actor pulled out of the psychological thriller project at the last minute, per Variety<\/a>.<\/p>\n McAvoy spoke about replacing Phoenix in a 2024 episode of theHappy Sad Confused<\/a><\/em>podcast, where he praised the Joker <\/em>star as being \u201can amazing actor\u201d but admitted he would have given “a very different performance to the one I did, but I think he\u2019d give an incredible performance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes coming in last minute is the best way,\u201d he explained. \u201cI 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,” he recalled.<\/p>\n Joaquin Phoenix has become known for his intense on-set behavior which has involved shedding weight quickly, asking the cast and crew to call him by his character name and even wiring his mouth<\/a> shut to create a speech impediment. <\/p>\n This story was originally published by <\/em>Parade<\/a><\/em> on Jul 16, 2026, where it first appeared in the <\/em>News<\/a><\/em> section. Add Parade as a <\/em>Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aol.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anya Taylor-Joy has admitted she was relieved to hear James McAvoy had replaced an actor in Split,\u00a0known for his intense methods. The actress, who is currently promoting her new Apple TV+ show Lucky, reflected on M. Night Shyamalan\u2019spsychological thriller to Hits Radio\u2019s Olivia Marks. In an early role for the Emma star, she played a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2199148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2505543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Melissa-Gilbert-Celebrates-Dick-Van-Dykes-100th-Birthday-With-Throwback.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505544,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505543\/revisions\/2505544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}