The Gorge, the wild new thriller starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, came out on Valentine’s Day, which makes it just about the most twisted date movie you’re ever going to see.
‘It’s alternative programming for Valentine’s Day,’ laughs Teller, the 37 year-old actor famed for movies like Whiplash and Top Gun: Maverick.
‘Honestly, I didn’t think of it as Valentine’s Day movie. And then when they told us that’s the release, I thought “Oh yeah!”’ With the film mixing up romance with other genres, ‘It just felt like something I’d never read before,’ he says.
Sitting next to Teller – looking slender and chic in a black evening dress despite the fact it’s daytime – is Taylor-Joy, the actress whose movies include Last Night in Soho and Furiosa: A Mad Max Story. She calls The Gorge ‘Valentine’s Day alt’ and she has a point. In the film, she plays Drasa, a Russian sniper stationed one side of a mysterious, fog-shrouded gorge. Teller’s Levi is also a sharp-shooter, working for the Americans, and positioned in an outpost on the other side.
What they’re both guarding is too spoiler-y to give away – it dips into scary movie terrain, in case you or your date is of a nervous disposition – but these two isolated rivals gradually start communicating and then falling for each other. ‘I really believed their relationship,’ says Taylor-Joy, the 28-year-old Miami-born actress who was raised in London. ‘I think because of their different backgrounds, what they’re offering to each other is really what the other person needs.’
Teller and Taylor-Joy aren’t the only ones pleased that Apple TV+ took the plunge to release the film on the most romantic day of the year. ‘This is the best possible release date for this movie,’ says the film’s writer/producer Zach Dean.
‘I’m so glad it’s on Valentine’s Day. And honestly, I think it’s like a love story like you’ve never seen. I think it’s a great date movie, and I love that this is coming out then. I think it has something for everyone.’
For Taylor-Joy, making The Gorge was also a chance to cement her status in blockbuster terrain after a career that’s been more built on indie movies like The Witch and The Menu. ‘I signed on to this halfway through Furiosa, and I felt like I was really physically prepared to jump into this movie, because I’d already done Furiosa.’
She reckons ‘for the rest of my career’ she’ll be jumping between indies and big-scales movies. ‘It’s an absolute pleasure to be on a movie with a huge budget that requires you to push your body in the way that a movie like this does. But it’s also really fun to do things that have a more independent spirit.’
While he seems in good spirits, it’s been a tough period for Teller. The actor recently lost the home he shares with his wife, model Keleigh Sperry, in the Los Angeles wildfires. As he told Entertainment Tonight, it’s been difficult to cope with ‘not having a sense of a home’, as he put it. ‘I think most people have a place where they feel like they can always go back to and so we’re dealing with not having that, and really not kind of having that sense for a while, but we’re doing alright. We have a wonderful relationship. And so we’re just being there for the other person.’
No doubt it’s why he’s glad to be doing press with Taylor-Joy. The two have been friends for a while even before they made The Gorge. ‘Before this project even came about, we shared some mutual friends, and we had met socially a couple times, and Anya and my wife became very good friends, and it’s really blossomed over the last
couple of years,’ Teller explains. His co-star nods. ‘I think we had a good feeling that we would [bond] but then when we came onto set, we were like, “Oh, yeah, this is very easy.”’
Did they learn anything about the other during the making of the movie? ‘Our relationship just strengthened,’ admits Teller. ‘And you truly get to know who somebody is when you’re spending fourteen hours a day for months on end [with them]. So, no, I love Anya. We’re very close.’ Taylor-Joy agrees.
‘I feel like the family bond just deepened,’ she says. ‘I think you can conceptually know that somebody has your back, but then you go through an experience like this, and you’re like, “No, no, he definitely has my back. One hundred percent.”’
Despite all this bonhomie, Taylor-Joy explains that they filmed a lot of their scenes separately – typical of a job that can be very lonely for actors.
‘You’re supposed to go far away from your home with a group of people that you don’t necessarily know yet,’ she says, ‘that then become your family, and you all create a make-believe world together that only exists when everybody is there, and then that world gets dismantled at the end of it. So I think that, by nature, can be quite isolating. But the beautiful thing about this industry that I’ve found, at least, is that the more you work, the more you meet people who have a similar lifestyle or who understand what it is that you’re going to do, and so I find a lot of solace in that.’
Could either actor do what their characters do, though, and be entirely removed from society? ‘We talked about I,’ says Taylor-Joy.
‘I think I’d be fine. I think I’d be okay. I would want my husband [musician Malcolm McRae] there with me if I could.’ Teller laughs. ‘Well, he’s not allowed! You’re by yourself!’ Taylor-Joy ignores him.
‘I’m not really an internet person…so I would read a lot of books, I would learn multiple languages, and I would pick up different musical instruments. I’d be good. Especially if it was in the woods, I’d be ace.’ Then the actress has an idea: ‘I would, semi-domesticate a wolf, and we would be A-okay!’ Now that sounds like a gorge-ous idea for a movie.
The Gorge is available to watch on Apple TV+ now.
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