‘Can We Get Rid Of This?’: Anya Taylor Joy’s Had A Blunt Reaction To The Chess Scene In The Gorge, But Something Changed Her Mind

It’s only February, but the 2025 movie release schedule is filling up with some pretty exciting new films. In this day and age, we don’t always need to find a big screen for said new releases, and such is the case with Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge. The film was just released today and can be watched by anyone with an Apple TV+ subscription. We’ve been all-in on The Gorge since the release of the first trailer months ago, but perhaps the same can’t be said for the film’s stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller. That's because there’s a big “wink” at both of their careers that the A-listers pleaded with the producers to remove.

For most of the film, Miles Teller’s Levi and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa are living isolated lives on either side of a massive gorge. During a montage where the two are trying to entertain themselves, Levi can be seen drumming, and Drasa can be seen playing chess. As you likely know, these acts harken back to projects the two of them worked on much earlier in their careers, and to avoid being too self-referential, Anya Taylor-Joy tried to get the segment nixed. While speaking with the two of them to celebrate The Gorge’s release, she told me this:

The project she’s referring to is 2020’s The Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series that followed Anya Taylor-Joy’s Beth Harmon on her long journey to become a chess master. The show was a huge success for Netflix and earned Anya Taylor-Joy a Golden Globe for her performance. It’s arguably one of the most recognizable roles of her career, so obviously upon seeing her play chess in The Gorge, people will draw a parallel.

The same goes for Miles Teller, who famously played drums in 2014’s Whiplash. Damien Chazelle’s first film is still sparking divisive discussions over a decade later, with some saying that it should have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and others saying they refused to vote for the film entirely. Either way, it’s one of Miles Teller’s most noteworthy roles, and he said this about the fact that he plays drums in The Gorge:

At the end of the day, they both seem glad that they lost the fight with their producers to get said “wink” removed, even though I likely struck up the exact conversation with them that they were trying to avoid.

The Gorge is directed by Scott Derrickson of Doctor Strange and The Black Phone fame (the latter of which is getting a sequel), and the horror director has delivered a delightfully dark love story. Watch it right now on Apple TV+! As far as everything else coming our way on the 2025 movie release schedule, keep it here at CinemaBlend for the latest.