Anya Taylor-Joy Talks About the Possibility of a Second Season of THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT

The Queen’s Gambit came out in October of last year, when we had been in the throws of the pandemic for seven months and were all looking for some new content to watch. Most of our movies and series that we had been looking forward to in 2020 had been pushed back, so this came at a great time and ended up becoming Netflix’s most watched limited series of all time.

Anya Taylor-Joy gave a fantastic performance, playing Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy who breaks into the male-dominated chess scene in the 1960s. Taylor-Joy recently talked to Deadline about the role, and the possibility of coming back to play the part in a second season. After reading the book the film is based on, the actress said:

“I said to myself, ‘If we were shooting tomorrow, I know exactly what I’m doing, I know how I want to do it, I understand this woman so well’. With Beth, it was instincts on a whole other level, I never had to reach for anything. They just had to yell ‘action’ and something would happen.”

As for a sequel, the series creator Scott Frank and EP William Horberg have indicated they never planned to have a second season, given the series being faithful to the parameters of the 1983 novel, but Taylor-Joy says:

“It’s so surreal and very wonderful that people want a second season, because we never thought about it, there was no discussion about it. That said, never say ‘never’ in Hollywood.”

She went on to add that if she did get to return to the role, she does have an idea of what she would like to see explored:

“It would be very interesting to see how Beth would be as a mother, now that she’s sober and more cognizant of the demons that pull her down. There’s something to be said of a character whose biggest enemy is herself. I think all of us living at home and being locked up, we’re probably confronting a lot more of ourselves than we’re used to, because we are used to being distracted. When you’re locked up in your house, there’s only a certain amount of room to run away from yourself. That is potentially something people were a bit more open to at the end of the day. The show also has a wonderful message: Even if you’re brilliant, you still need help. We work better with support, and I think Beth sees the beauty in the support that she garners eventually.”

It sounds like it would be very easy for the actress to get right back into the role and turn out another fantastic performance. And though the series set out to be limited, it could follow the formula of the HBO series Big Little Lies, which went beyond the novel and explored the characters and story one step further with fantastic results.

Would you like to see another season of The Queen’s Gambit?