Few actors can say they worked on two comic book films back-to-back, but you can count Anya Taylor-Joy among the handful. Right after starring as Illyana Rasputin/Magik in the upcoming X-Men spinoff The New Mutants, she jumped right back to reprise her Split role of Casey Cooke in Glass.
In a recent interview with CinemaBlend's own Corey Chichizola, Anya Taylor-Joy told him how her role in Glass was the perfect way to follow the thrill of working on New Mutants. In her words:
What made me laugh was that I wrapped New Mutants, got in a car, drove from Boston to Philadelphia, and started shooting Glass. It felt different because I didn't have actual superpowers in this one. It felt good to return to Casey and return to something a bit more grounded. That's not to say I didn't have the best time playing Illyana. There's a certain level of camp that comes with my character that I relished in. And then to go straight back to something that's so internal and so within your head. It felt like the right move.
Taking on a leading role in New Mutants as Illyana Rasputin -- the younger sister of Colossus who has incredible teleportation abilities through time, space, the future and past -- must have been a whirlwind. Anya Taylor-Joy seems to be thankful she could revisit her role of Casey from 2016's Split for its recently released sequel, Glass.
M. Night Shyamalan's Split was the unexpected sequel to his 2000 film Unbreakable. Split follows a man with dissociate identity disorder (played by James McAvoy) who kidnaps three teenage girls (including Anya Taylor-Joy's Casey) to feed them to his "beast" identity.
Casey ends up surviving the kidnapping and forms an unlikely bond with a few of her kidnapper's more friendly identities, such as a 9-year-old boy named Hedwig and Kevin Wendell Crumb.
Glass leans into the comic book-themed roots of Unbreakable, as Split's villain meets the two superpowered characters from the 2000 film, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson).
In Glass, Anya Taylor-Joy isn't one of the superheroes in the middle of the situation, but she's a supporting player. Her Casey was recently kidnapped by "The Horde," so she's still suffering from that trauma, but she also knows some of his weaknesses more than anyone else. Casey and the main characters meet Dr. Ellie Staple, played by Sarah Paulson, who is approached by Casey after locking The Horde and the other "comic book characters" in a high-security hospital to treat them.
Anya Taylor-Joy first caught the attention of audiences in indie horror flick The Witch in 2015 but is best known as Split's Casey. Her new role in The New Mutants will debut alongside Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams and Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton. That film hits theaters on August 2, 2019. Glass is now in theaters.
