Matt Smith Tells Anya Taylor-Joy Why “Life’s Fucking Mega”

When Matt Smith hops on Zoom with his Last Night in Soho partner-in-crime Anya Taylor-Joy, two things are immediately obvious. One: He’s the dive-in-headfirst, bleed-for-the-role, “let’s get weird” type. Two: He’s still one of the boys—a dyed-in-the-wool Londoner just as fluent in locker-room shit-talking and late-night pints as he is in Shakespearean soliloquies. Lately, he’s been bouncing between spewing fire (again) as Daemon Targaryen on House of the Dragon and rocking a sky-high mohawk as a ’90s punk grifter in Darren Aronofsky’s neon-lit heist flick Caught Stealing. Twenty years into his career, Smith is still all in, and as he tells Taylor-Joy, it’s that leap of faith, the gamble, that keeps him hooked.

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THURSDAY 1 PM JULY 10, 2025 LONDON

ANYA TAYLOR-JOY: Hello?

MATT SMITH: Hello? Hello?

TAYLOR-JOY: Wait, I unmuted myself.

SMITH: [Sings] Anya can you hear me?

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs] Can you hear me?

SMITH: Loud and clear, baby.

TAYLOR-JOY: Thank you for singing to me. What a lovely surprise.

SMITH: Any day of the week, mate. Thank you for doing this. You’re a G.

TAYLOR-JOY: Of course, honey. I love you, obviously. Where are you right now?

SMITH: I’ve just got back from a work thing and I’m back home in London; it’s boiling. Where are you?

TAYLOR-JOY: I’m on my first day of holiday in Turkey. I just came back from my first dip in the sea. I am thrilled. But—

SMITH: Anya, why are you doing this?

TAYLOR-JOY: I’m sorry, baby. But I’ll say the last time I saw you, I was above you at Oasis. How fucking great was that gig?

SMITH: Holy fucking—dude, I went two nights on the trot. It blew the fucking socks off it, man. That following the weekend of Glastonbury was like, bang.

TAYLOR-JOY: The dream. I did Glastonbury, Diana Ross, and then Oasis. I feel quite fulfilled. I’ve never seen British people that fucking happy. It was amazing.

SMITH: Have you never been on a Ryanair flight to Ibiza?

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs] Actually, you’re right. Well, before we jump into the movie, which I am very excited about, I wanted to ask you about something you and I have touched on personally. It’s your transition from football to acting. Obviously, when you’re going for something athletic, you have the same kind of intensity as you would pursuing something in the arts. So what was it like for you to switch focuses in that way?

SMITH: This is why I love Anya Taylor-Joy—just, bang, straight to the forensic jugular.

TAYLOR-JOY: I love you.

SMITH: We had so many night shoots on Last Night in Soho and I feel we covered fucking everything, man. That felt like quite a nice green room in between takes, innit? Because we were both going through quite weird periods in life as well. In that actor-y way, we just fucking opened up. But I suppose from sport, what I learned is that sense of inner competition with yourself, how to be really fucking disciplined about approaching the material and the structure of the day.

TAYLOR-JOY: Yes. I feel like you have to walk this tightrope between being consistently emotionally available and getting yourself in whatever position you have to in order to give the honesty of the emotion, but also taking care of your body. I wake up every single day at three in the morning and push myself physically throughout the course of a shooting day, which can be really tiring. That’s something I didn’t imagine about acting when I first got into it, and now I’ve learned to love it in a slightly sadistic way. [Laughs]

SMITH: But as you get older, you’re like, “Fuck, I’ve got to make room for my life as well.”

TAYLOR-JOY: I was just having this conversation with my mom in the sea. I don’t know about you, but I recharge not necessarily through rest, but through eating with my eyes, or with experience. Any moment that I’m not on set, I want to be devouring life in some way.

SMITH: [Laughs] But I’ve never, ever known you to go on holiday.

TAYLOR-JOY: I start Dune [Part Three] in a week, but wait a minute, I have so many questions for you.

SMITH: Okay, hit me.

TAYLOR-JOY: What’s the relationship you have with that voice inside of your head, and how has that changed as you’ve grown older and worked more? If this goes too deep, honey, you tell me to back off.

SMITH: Listen, Anya Taylor-Joy. This is the way we roll. God, that’s a big question though, isn’t it? I mean, do you know what, my therapist died and that—

TAYLOR-JOY: What?!

SMITH: Yeah. He was a really amazing man, and that was quite a shift.

TAYLOR-JOY: How long had you been seeing each other?

SMITH: A while, actually. He saw loads of actors; it was the most hilarious thing. But one of the things he taught me was, that sense of inner voice you have when you’re acting, sometimes you’ve got to switch it off.

TAYLOR-JOY: Yeah.

SMITH: Everything is a fucking quest to be present, isn’t it? I was probably quite loud when I was young. I was a fucking weird kid. But acting gives you an avenue to purge.

TAYLOR-JOY: And it introduces you to different kinds of voices. The voice that I had in my head that I couldn’t really separate from myself, I realized I had to introduce another voice in order to be able to talk to it. And I find that characters can sometimes introduce that voice, because you’re forced to be deeply empathetic and somebody else’s choices. It teaches you to communicate with yourself in a different way.

SMITH: It does. But it’s weird, isn’t it? How when you’re playing a character who’s a complete fuck-up, you’re always backing them. I mean, I played Patrick Bateman in a musical and I fucking loved him. I was like, why?

TAYLOR-JOY: I love you so much.

SMITH: This guy’s just fucking misunderstood. Do you know what I mean?

TAYLOR-JOY: Yeah.

SMITH: And he’s a bona fide serial killer. But it’s a big question, man. And actually it’s a lifelong one, I think.

TAYLOR-JOY: Agreed.

SMITH: I don’t know why I brought up my therapist, but I guess he was quite tough on me. He was tough on that voice that was basically being a juvenile little shit trying to undermine me. “Fucking get on with it, grow up, life’s fucking mega. Crack on, enjoy it, every day’s a beaut, isn’t it?”

TAYLOR-JOY: I love that. Do you find that there are certain characters that, at the end of your time with them, you’re like, “You know, that was really good for me”?

SMITH: Yeah, I loved playing Doctor Who. What’s amazing about him, or her, they, is he can go from A to Z and miss out every other fucking letter because he’s a fucking 900-year-old alien, and he’s seen everything, done everything. That show gives you permission to be eccentric because he’s truly an alien in a human world. There’s so much stuff that comes under your nose and you go, “Oh, should I’ve done that?” But the things you say yes to aren’t the things you regret, because eventually it’s the experience that counts.

TAYLOR-JOY: Completely.

SMITH: I loved playing Prince Philip [in The Crown] because he’s a bit like
Doctor, he’s a total outsider who just does what the fuck he wants.

TAYLOR-JOY: And has been brought up in an extreme set of circumstances that no one else in the world can understand.

SMITH: Yeah. But then it’s also interesting playing someone from real life. It’s not an impersonation; it’s about dialing down to the essence of their energy. Does that make sense?

TAYLOR-JOY: Completely. You channel into an energy and then you try to be as truthful as you can within the surreal set of circumstances that you find yourself in.

SMITH: Yeah. Would you ever want to do a play?

TAYLOR-JOY: I would love to. I think it’s about the timing of it all for me. I feel like I’m on a train, and the train is heading somewhere—

SMITH: It’s heading to the fucking Oscars, babe.

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs] But the feeling that you get when you are surrounded by people who are really, really good at the specific thing they do, to speak about channeling again, you all connect to the same source for a split second. And without verbalizing anything, every body knows what they’re going after. That feeling is very specific to a film set, and it’s what I get out of bed for every day. I want to live in that for as long as I can. But I would absolutely love to do a play. The sense of ownership that you feel on stage must be quite a high.

SMITH: Eddie Fox, he’s a wonderful actor and a dear man. I asked him, “What keeps you going back,” and he said, “Well, darling, the thing is, onstage is where one sharpens one’s tools.”

TAYLOR-JOY: So right. You have your own brand of magic every single time.

SMITH: Exactly. And it’s fucking malleable, ever-changing, and also you’re bringing in your day and your life. But it also feels like a prison sentence if it’s a long run.

TAYLOR-JOY: Do you have a preference between the two?

SMITH: Well, it’s like anything. Some jobs you do for different reasons. I bet you’ve done jobs where you’ve gone, “Actually, this affords me to go to Turkey and have a nice holiday,” and then there’s some that are about working with a specific actor or director. Every job has a different element to it. But I always go back and do a play every two or three years, or try to.

TAYLOR-JOY: I can’t believe I’ve never seen you tread the boards, my darling.

SMITH: Listen—

TAYLOR-JOY: Last deep question. Something that I’ve always appreciated about you is that you have an ability to see things the way they are, rather than the way people wish them to be. You have a bullshit detector that’s out of this world. I’m wondering if there’s anything about you that you wish people would understand from the get-go?

SMITH: [Laughs] Wow.

TAYLOR-JOY: Sorry. [Laughs]

SMITH: No. Again, a brilliant and profound and deeply forensic line of questioning, which I love about you.

TAYLOR-JOY: You’re regretting this now.

SMITH: Never. Well, firstly, that’s a great compliment. But I suppose feeling misunderstood, that’s always been a good trigger for me as an actor.

TAYLOR-JOY: Say more.

SMITH: I remember in my twenties, everything was about rebellion, and that gave me this energy to say, “I’ll do it, I’ll get there.” And then I realized, as I’ve gotten into my thirties, as a man in particular, you can’t sustain that. You have to adapt to and change your energy. But I’m not brave enough to talk about it. [Laughs] It’s why I need a therapist again, isn’t it?

TAYLOR-JOY: I mean, listen, I’ll be your therapist any day of the week.

SMITH: You won’t want to be.

TAYLOR-JOY: But on the subject of rebellion—a terribly deep question. How do we feel about the mohawk? I remember my brother had one when he was younger, and he was like, “I can’t fucking sleep. My head won’t sit properly on the pillow.” [Laughs]

SMITH: It is a bitch, man. When you go to have a little 10-, 20-minute nap in the trailer, it’s really hard.

TAYLOR-JOY: Was that all your hair?

SMITH: Yeah.

TAYLOR-JOY: Fuck, yeah.

SMITH: Truth be told, I got to New York and I was a bit nervous. I was like, “What the fuck am I going to look like?” That’s your hair for fucking four months, innit? And then they’re like, “We think it should be lime green.” I was like, “Maybe it should just be blonde or pink.” I was kind of backing out and then Darren [Aronofsky] came in and he’s like, “Look, man, this is happening. We’re shaving it down to the bone.”

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs]

SMITH: He was there when I got it shaved off. This is what’s great about being an actor, isn’t it? There’s something really liberating about traveling through that. You go, “Oh, god, I’m going to feel stupid, and ugly, and a twat and all that.” And then I fucking loved it. I mean, a lot of my friends thought I looked like a dickhead.

TAYLOR-JOY: But you felt free.

SMITH: Yeah. And what’s interesting about having a haircut like that is the way you look at the world slightly changes, and the way the world looks back at you slightly changes.

TAYLOR-JOY: Completely.

SMITH: I was just standing in the corner of rooms like a bouncer.

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs]

SMITH: I loved it. I kept it for months after.

TAYLOR-JOY: For the record, I think you looked great. I’m really sad that I didn’t get to experience it in real life.

SMITH: For Furiosa, did you have to shave yours?

TAYLOR-JOY: I’d always had really long blonde hair, and I chopped it all off and dyed it black when I first started acting because I wanted to look as little like myself as possible. So I was really excited by the prospect of being naked, of getting to walk through the world and not have this anchor of femininity to tie me down. I told all the brands I was doing it, I was so ready. And then I went in and George [Miller, the director of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga] fell in love with my hair. He was like, “I don’t want you to do it.” I was quite bummed. I still want to do it.

SMITH: It’s such a great film. But it looked tough on a day-to-day level.

TAYLOR-JOY: It was interesting because everything I thought would be hard was easy, and the things I thought would be easy were hard. In terms of the physicality of the shoot, I had the time of my life. Stunt people are the coolest. But George had such a specific vision for the character, and that vision was so stoic and so silent, that it was a real psychological journey to go on, to be that quiet and that emotionless for such a long time.

SMITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TAYLOR-JOY: It took me some time to come back from it, to be honest with you. Just last year I started to be able to trust my own voice again. So it was a fascinating experience and I’m so, so glad that I did it, because we follow great filmmakers. That’s what I wanted to ask you about Darren. What’s it like being in his world?

SMITH: I loved it. He made me audition four times. By the fourth time I thought, “Oh, man. Either he wants to do it or he doesn’t.”

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs]

SMITH: But I really wanted to be part of it. He’s a really interesting man. He’s a bit like Radiohead.

TAYLOR-JOY: Nice, calm.

SMITH: Yeah. Everything’s like an album. I really responded to his way of directing. He’s sort of tough in a good way.

TAYLOR-JOY: Is it a lot of takes?

SMITH: Not necessarily a lot of takes. It’s just that there’s a real eye for quality and story and he fucking expects you to bring your A-game. There’s a part-football-coach about him.

TAYLOR-JOY: I love that. Because you come from football, and I come from the ballet world, there’s something really nice in having somebody say, “Hey, that was good, but I think you can do better.” I love that shit. I’m like, “Let’s go.”

SMITH: Exactly. And ballet, that’s such good training for life because, mate, that’s a tough world. Dude, you have to play a ballerina.

TAYLOR-JOY: I would love to. I mean, there’s definitely a part of me that’s like, “The last time I did it I was really good. And this time I won’t be as good at the beginning.” But there’s something to be said for—I call it the wall of suckage. When you’re learning a new skill, if you’re not immediately brilliant at something, you have to make a pilgrimage to the wall of suckage every day. And a lot of people just give up. But if you keep going, at some point you break through the wall.

SMITH: Yeah. And again, that’s one of the great virtues of being an actor, isn’t it? You get these pockets of life that ordinarily you might never have explored. Like, “Right, okay, I’m going to look really deeply into chess.” And chess is fucking amazing.

TAYLOR-JOY: Yeah. “My job is to be able to do this.”

SMITH: I mean, imagine being Magnus [Carlsen], the greatest chess player in the world. He seems like a hoot, frankly.

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs] I talk about this a lot with my non-actor friends. It says so much about mindset. Because when you’ve said yes to a job, part of that is saying, “Yes, I will learn how to do this.” Your mind cannot hold failure. You’re gaslighting yourself into being like, “Yeah, I don’t have a license, but I will be able to do these car stunts because I don’t have a choice.” [Laughs]

SMITH: Back to your first question about the inner voice, it’s quite interesting that you’re also training your inner voice to convince yourself that you can do it. So much of that, in acting and art, is that leap of faith. It’s like, “Fuck, here it goes. Let’s dance.” And that’s what’s kind of thrilling about it, actually.

TAYLOR-JOY: Did you love filming in New York? Where did you live?

SMITH: I lived in SoHo. Basically one of my life’s addictions is hotels. It’s a running joke, really.

TAYLOR-JOY: [Laughs] What do you love about them?

SMITH: I just fucking love hotels. Honestly, my fucking accountant is like, “Matt, you’ve had your fun. Come on now, you live in London.” I’m at Claridge’s all the time. I go back, me and my dog, and they go, “Welcome home, Mr. Smith. Welcome home, Bobby.”

TAYLOR-JOY: It is a lovely feeling, isn’t it?

SMITH: I don’t know what it is. Anyway, I just stayed at the Bowery for a couple of months. It was a thrill; I loved to walk around that city. And there’s a sort of interesting anonymity about it, which is nice. I don’t know if you find that.

TAYLOR-JOY: Well, I find that I can out-walk anybody in New York.

SMITH: Really?

TAYLOR-JOY: I’m a walker. I love to have autonomy over whether I want to stay in a space or not. And because I still don’t have my license, I don’t get that in L.A.

SMITH: Where’s home for you now, then?

TAYLOR-JOY: I just finished six months in L.A. on the first show that I produced, which is quite exciting.

SMITH: Congratulations. What’s that?

TAYLOR-JOY: It’s called Lucky, for Apple. Production scratches a very specific itch with me that I just love.

SMITH: I didn’t know that. Nice.

TAYLOR-JOY: Thank you, honey. But I’ll be in the Middle East until the end of the year, and then I’m back in London on my next show.

SMITH: Back in the manor. Listen, London summers, I actually love it here. It’s so beautiful right now. I go swimming in the—

TAYLOR-JOY: Everyone’s just so happy. Wait, do you go swimming in the ponds?

SMITH: Every fucking day.

TAYLOR-JOY: Dreamy. Alright, honey, before I let you go, if you could be like, “I want more fun, more work, more adventure, more love,” for the next year, what are you calling in for yourself?

SMITH: I’ve got to fucking properly renovate my house.

TAYLOR-JOY: I feel like we’ve been talking about this house for a very long time.

SMITH: [Laughs] It’s been a running joke. Mate, I owned it for like fucking two years. I live in my flat around the corner. I come around, sit in the garden, have a beer, and go, “Nah, I’m going to go back to the flat.” Anyway, now I’ve got this lovely garden and I want to really develop it. And then, who knows?

TAYLOR-JOY: Grow some roots.

SMITH: Yeah. And I want to do a bit of traveling. I’m actually going to try and go to Argentina. To your motherland, baby.

TAYLOR-JOY: Hell yeah. If you do, let me know. My family is massive and they’ll take you out anywhere.

SMITH: Aren’t you the youngest of six or seven?

TAYLOR-JOY: Six, yeah. [Laughs] My youngest sister just had a baby; our brood just keeps growing.

SMITH: That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, isn’t it? How about you? What do you want to call in for yourself?

TAYLOR-JOY: Adventures in nature. I’ve started doing this crazy thing where on days off I go and climb the nearest mountain, and it’s weird because I’m not fit. [Laughs]

SMITH: You are.

TAYLOR-JOY: I’m stubborn; there’s a difference. And there’s just something so simple about starting at the base of a mountain and being like, “I’m going to keep going until I reach the top.” It quiets my mind in such an intense way. I was reading in my book, “Sophistication is simplicity.”

SMITH: I love that. It’s like when you see really amazing actors and they’re just being totally simple. And you’re like, “Fuck, how are you doing that?” And it’s because they’re really fucking sophisticated. Then there’s me, fucking climbing around all over the place, desperately trying to act.

TAYLOR-JOY: Matt! Give yourself some credit.

SMITH: You know what I mean, though.

TAYLOR-JOY: You are an absolutely beautiful actor. You have a sensitivity where you can see through the shell of whoever you’re playing; it’s a transparency that’s gorgeous to watch. But hey, when does this movie come out?

SMITH: August 29. And shout-out to the brilliant Austin Butler as well, who’s just a total dream.

TAYLOR-JOY: I was going to say, isn’t he just so lovely?

SMITH: And like you, just a total bona fide fucking movie star. He leads the company in a really diligent, humble way. Listen, it was a wonderful experience. And I’m just really grateful that you took the time to do this on your holiday, Anya.

TAYLOR-JOY: I love you, honey. And I hope I get the chance to see you soon. I’m going to jump back in the ocean now. [Laughs]

SMITH: You have fun. Send love to the boy, and I hope I see you soon. Big up. Enough respect, man. Thank you so much.

TAYLOR-JOY: Love you so much, angel. Bye, sweetheart. [Laughs]

SMITH: Thank you. Peace. Bye.

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Grooming Smith: Petra Sellge at The Wall Group.

Set Design: Harry Stayt.

Photography Assistant: Yoan Zdravkov.

Fashion Assistants: Qianling Du and Anabelle Esqulant.

Production: James Hazlett Beard at Art Engine.

Production Coordination: Andre Augusto.

On-set Production: Jeremy Rwaka.