Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller Find Love in a Hopeless Place in ‘The Gorge’

Getting the incomparable Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller on the same screen was only a matter of time. After years of polishing their acting creds, headlining auteur-driven indie films, the pair has seemingly shifted gears with their latest undertakings. Her fearless performance in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and his star-making turn in Top Gun: Maverick inadvertently had the industry buzzing if we were looking at the next-gen action heroes.

Then came The Gorge. The genre-blending film falls in line with the recent additions—the Hollywood tentpoles—to their filmographies. Set in a remote wilderness where a horizon-swallowing ravine hides a secret that poses a cataclysmic threat to humanity, the Scott Derrickson-directed thrill ride sees Taylor-Joy and Teller taking on the roles of elite sharpshooters tasked to keep the evil that lurks under them contained.

Standing guard over the classified gorge, stationed in towers on opposite sides, proves to be a challenge unlike any they had encountered before. Their innate longing for connection over time drowns out the rules, leading to an unlikely romance that ultimately results in a slip-up, sending them tumbling into the gorge. We sat down with the actors ahead of the film’s premiere on Apple TV+ for some exclusive behind-the-scenes details.

You mentioned before that you’ve wanted to collaborate for a long time. Did you ever imagine it would be on a project like this?

Anya (A): I think we had hoped that the right project would come along. What’s great about The Gorge is that it was fun seeing him in all of these different situations—showing up to set and seeing him hanging upside down on a tree, things like that.

Miles (M): The thing about this movie is that pretty much all of the set pieces were practical. The production team really built these massive constructions of the different places in the script. I haven’t worked on a ton of movies like that. So, Anya and I would just look at each other and crack up because it felt like we were in a movie.

You’ve both tackled films with physical challenges before. What was different about the experience on this one compared to those?

M: They are all different. This project was very unique in that it blended so many different elements. I knew as an actor that there would be a lot of unique challenges to it. I wasn’t flying a plane, I was barely in a cockpit, which is unfortunate, but I was still slightly airborne. There was some zip line work too. That’s what made it fun—when you get to experience all these things.

A: Agreed. I did this movie right after Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, so I felt very physically fit, but the set pieces in this were all so different that they required a different set of skills. But it was so exciting because you would go to work and you knew it was going to be something completely different from what you had done the day before.

You’re both playing snipers in the film. Who do you think is the better shot?

M: So many people have asked us this question and we’re way too humble to ever declare one of us the winner.

A: We’re both trained by different people. Miles trained with somebody who had been trained in America and I worked with somebody who was trained in Lithuania. It’s actually a very different way of going about the same job. But it was really exciting when they put us together in a fight sequence. We were like, “Oh, we’re doing different things. This is exciting.”

Was there a scene that was especially challenging for you to film?

A: Being a sniper is an entirely different way of approaching this kind of work. It requires a lot of research and patience, and you are very much on your own throughout it. So, that was completely new for me. There’s a sequence towards the end of the film that was particularly challenging to film as we were on a real Jeep that’s up in the air, moving upwards. We were very proud when that was completed.

M: I echo everything that Anya just said. The fight sequence we did on the Jeep was certainly our biggest set piece in The Gorge and it took the longest time to accomplish that. That was very tricky. I don’t think I’ll ever do anything quite like that again. But never say never.

There’s a long-distance romance in the film. What was it like shooting those scenes in isolation?

A: We originally had the best of intentions. We wanted to be there for each other. So throughout rehearsal, it was very much, “I will be there for every one of your scenes.” But then, on the first day of filming, Miles was in his tower, and they put me on a hydraulic lift however far away, and it was very clear that it was not going to work. But we’re lucky that we’re already friends, so we have that easy familiarity going into it.

Your characters are physically separated but still develop an emerging connection. How did you approach building that dynamic together?

A: We shot the film pretty much in sequence. So I feel like because we experienced the shooting of the movie the way that the audience experiences it, as long as we cared about each other and these characters’ connection, it would come across as very natural and easy.

M: Shooting in sequence is always helpful. There are certain projects where you’re shooting the scenes of the first time they meet and their final goodbyes on the same day. I’ve had that experience before. So I very much enjoyed this shoot.

This is a genre-blending film. So in your opinion, what’s the key element that makes it all come together and work?

M: Anya and I talked about the script beforehand, and we agreed that we needed to focus on the connection between the two characters. If that doesn’t work, then you’re not going to buy the stakes. Even though they just met, you have to truly believe that they would take a bullet for the other person. And to me, that’s the strength of this film.

How did you both balance the emotional depth of Levi and Drasa’s relationship with the high-intensity action sequences?

M: I think genre really comes together in the editing room because I wouldn’t know how to act according to a genre. To me, it just felt like a very grounded circumstance—ordinary people put in extraordinary circumstances. I enjoyed the love story between the two of them, I think that grounds the whole piece. If you don’t take that seriously, the whole movie falls apart.

A: All characters come through differently, but I do find that making a playlist for each of them is really helpful because if you can go into your trailer in the morning after hair and makeup and have a couple of songs that just feel like the person, I always feel like that’s an easier way of putting on somebody’s skin than if you didn’t have the music. So, the Drasa playlist was very helpful.

Can we talk about the film’s exploration of voyeurism? How did you approach those moments of feeling watched?

A: Oh, interesting question. I hadn’t thought about it in that way before. I think people who are uncomfortable with voyeurism—I count myself as one of them—are those who are not necessarily that comfortable in their own skin. But I think Drasa really is. She plays with life, which is completely in contrast to the severity of the job she does. I think she sort of enjoyed it because she’s performative even when nobody is watching her. That’s just the way she is as a person. Having the additional audience member probably really excited her.