'Lucky': Anya Taylor-Joy 'fought' to cast Drew Starkey — 'Somebody that you would miss as the audience'

In Lucky, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong is a con woman on the run after her husband, Cary Masterson, played by Drew Starkey, disappears with millions from their recent heist.

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In Lucky, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, who is also an executive producer on the series, Luciana "Lucky" Armstrong is a con woman on the run after her husband, Cary Masterson, played by Drew Starkey, disappears with millions from their recent heist. Lucky learned what she knows from her father, John Armstrong (Timothy Olyphant), a lifelong grifter, but she didn't have an example of how to come out of these situations clean. Based on the novel by Marissa Stapley, Lucky is a thrilling series that explores all sides of its lead character.

A woman who is messy, courageous, vulnerable and morally ambiguous. It has everything from exhilarating car chases to emotionally deep moments that will keep you on your toes. "I think inherently the feminist in me was a bit frustrated at seeing a lot of morally ambiguous men and not that many morally ambiguous women.

I would like people to be treated as people," Taylor-Joy told reporters ahead of the show's premiere. "Cassie [Pappas] and I didn't write a word that wasn't written for Anya," co-showrunner Jonathan Tropper said in a separate press conference. "Also, she's a very specific actor, and she's got a very specific voice.

She's a fiercely intelligent person. As soon as you talk to her, you sense that." "And when you're writing a character who's meant to be the smartest person in any room, and you have someone like Anya who can portray it, ... that made our writing much more directed. ...

She, as an actor, could process what we were writing and come back to us with her own thoughts about it because she had been living with the character, actually, as long, if not longer, than we had. So from a creative standpoint, it was another partner in finding the character." 'Incredibly similar life experiences in two totally different worlds' Lucky explores particularly interesting parent-child dynamics.

Lucky's relationship with her dad and her desire to free herself from the life she was raised in, yet how it draws her back in. And Cary's relationship with his mother, Priscilla Matheson, played by Annette Bening, the family's criminal matriarch. "He's behind bars, but he seems to behave as though he's one of the good guys.

Olyphant said. "He, I think, genuinely loves his daughter. He's genuinely trying desperately to do the right thing.

He just isn't capable." For Starkey, a starting point for his work to embody Cary was exploring "destiny and fate." "I think we're all kind of born into this idea that we're meant to go down a certain road.

And I think these are two characters, I know for Cary especially, he's constantly at flux and confrontation with his own future, and what's the road laid out in front of him," Starkey said. "And I think he finds someone who has had incredibly similar life experiences in two totally different worlds in a way, and they're able to kind of shape their own fate. I think there's some hope in that and hope within each other for the two of them."

"Freud would probably have a lot to say about these two's relationships," Taylor-Joy added. "You could argue that, in a way, that they are kind of both dating a vision of their parents, but also desperately trying to move away from that and trying to not play out those roles again." For Lucky, there's a particularly interesting moment in Episode 2, when Lucky seeks refuge with a family, Sylvia (Alanna Ubach) and her two young granddaughters, and something so simple, the fact that they sit down and eat dinner together, is interesting to Lucky, because that was so far from the reality of her upbringing.

"You only know what you know, and Lucky's been operating with a story in her mind that has helped her get to the point where she's at in life, and I think part of that story is, 'My childhood was fine.' Full stop. 'I don't want to talk about it.

I don't really want to go into it.' If I have to, then that's going to change the way that I look at my present and ultimately my future, and I don't really want to have to do that," Taylor-Joy said, also stressing that it was a highlight to work with Alanna Ubach. "And I think the entire sequence in that house is so telling for her because I think it's also a moment where you get to see her really struggle with the decision to take from people who have been nothing but kind to her.

So I think she's feeling like a real stranger, not just in an environment that she's never been a part of, but also she's the bad in this environment, and I don't think she's used to necessarily seeing herself that way." Anya Taylor-Joy: 'I fought very hard for Drew to be in this show' As a producer on the series, Taylor-Joy recognized that the men in the show, particularly Starkey and Olyphant, had to bring a lot of charisma to their characters, but also embody Cary and John in ways that would allow the audience to care about them, even if they were doing things that were "atrocious."

That's very much the case in Lucky, and for Starkey and Taylor-Joy, as messy as their relationship is, you do really believe that there is love between them. "I fought very hard for Drew to be in this show. I knew he was our Cary," Taylor-Joy said.

"[He has] this ability to be very vulnerable whilst wrapped in a lot of strength. And this character needed to be somebody that you would miss as the audience, and then also want to hear out after he does something, which is technically unforgivable. And I think Drew has that."

"There's a fight sequence that we have that we shot over multiple days, and there were moments where I was like, 'Why do I feel for you in this moment in time? You did a bad thing.' And that's exactly what we needed from our actor who was playing Cary.

And then I also got a friend, which was really nice." 'The lines take care of so much for you' The cast of Lucky also had enormous respect, gratitude and faith in the team behind the series, created with Apple Studios and Hello Sunshine. Olyphant had worked with showrunner Jonathan Tropper on the film This Is Where I Leave You, which Tropper wrote.

He also worked with executive Lauren Neustadter on Daisy Jones & The Six. "I always joke that producers are kind of just dead weight. But in Laure's case, she really is a big part of the equation.

And she's a really great collaborator. And a force. And I just had a lovely experience.

So when this came up, I was already leaning forward because she was involved," Olyphant said. "That material is so fascinating, so complicated. But as an actor, it's also so simple.

It's so clear what you're doing, what your intention is, what you're trying to achieve. So it makes it very easy to act. The lines take care of so much for you."