Maybe because of the many ghoulish, action-packed horrors of “The Gorge,” streaming Friday on AppleTV+, Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller generate a combustible chemistry.
They’re Drasa and Levi, military operatives recruited to guard a remote, mighty mysterious water-filled mountain gorge. Stationed on opposite sides, they are never meant to interact.
But after months of long-distance looks they make physical contact – only to realize what danger awaits! Which is why chemistry was essential.
“We were friends before this project even came about,” Teller, 37, said in a virtual roundtable interview. “We had met socially, my wife became very good friends with Anya. So as soon as we started filming, we were excited to just hang out — and we did.”
“With a co-star, you want to feel like you are able to go anywhere,” Taylor-Joy, 28, said, “and they’re going to follow and catch you. That is certainly the case with Miles.
“Their backgrounds,” she added, “are part of the reason why they do make such a good match. Drasa I found fascinating, because despite the darkness of the world in which she inhabits, she herself is a very light person.
“And that comes from her relationship with her father. She’s always had somebody who she could say anything to, and he would be there to, as we say in the film, carry her shame.
“So it was interesting. Because she was so comfortable in her skin, I think she really allowed Levi to come more into his own.”
Taylor-Joy even figured out a reason for the two to mesh so well. “We’re coming at this assignment differently. For Drasa, the understanding that she has is that she’s just put out a very expensive hit and now, she has to disappear for a while.”
Also, she suspects, “They were both given very different information about the gorge before they showed up. Because for her she’s literally in hiding, this is a tidying up that she has to do.”
As for playing an isolated operative for months, far from home, “The job can be isolating,” she acknowledged. “Because what you’re supposed to do is go far away from your home, with a group of people that you don’t necessarily know.
“Yet they then become your ‘family’ and you all create a make-believe world together, one that only exists when everybody is there.
“At the end that world gets dismantled. By nature, that can be quite isolating.
“But the beautiful thing I’ve found about this industry is that the more you work, the more you meet people who have a similar lifestyle. Who understand what it is that you’re going through.
“I find a lot of solace in that.”
“The Gorge” streams Friday on AppleTV+