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Anya Taylor-Joy Recalls Filming Awkward S-x Scene In The Queen’s Gambit

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Updated on July 6, 2023

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Anya Taylor-Joy, star of Queen’s Gambit, tells Refinery29 over the phone, “S-x is inherently quite funny and awkward. So, I’m really glad that it was important for Scott to let us see that experience .” Scott Frank is the director and co-writer of The Queen’s Gambit. For Beth Harmon, Taylor-Joy’s brilliant heroine, Frank unabashedly leans into the awkwardness of s-x.

“The first time that Beth does have s-x with somebody, I added a pat in. And then I was worried that Scott was going to be like, ‘You need to take that away,’” Taylor-Joy said. “And I was like, ‘But, she doesn’t know how to finish anything.’”

Taylor-Joy was accurate — and Frank maintained her “pat” in the fourth episode “Middle Game,” which viewers can see in the first five minutes. Beth gets her first s-xual encounter in this episode, as Taylor-Joy mentioned. It’s really unsatisfying. Beth lies in bed, unsure of how to go as her anonymous hookup falls off of her in a stoned haze, still fully dressed. All Beth can do is give the guy two thunderous pats on the shoulder as he slips off to sleep.

“Any time she’s played a game of chess, she’s always shaken hands with somebody. So she feels like she needs to close the chapter on whatever just happened,” Taylor-Joy says. “She’s like, ‘Well done. You tried. Thank you.’”

Most shows would only risk having one cringe-worthy s-x scene like Beth’s first. The Queen’s Gambit has many of them — and none of the nud!ty or X X X hookups that so many ostensibly s-xual shows gorge themselves on merely to establish their edge. Rather, viewers frequently get a peek of Beth’s s-xuality during her awkward post-coital moments. Following the success of this spring’s Jane Austen adaption Emma, star Taylor-Joy has established herself as the go-to actor for portraying feminine desire without ever having to remove a glove, much alone display her body in a s-x scene. The only way viewers could truly come to know Beth Harmon, according to Taylor-Joy, was through such a visually modest approach.

“With Beth, it’s not that [explicit nud!ty] would detract from the story, it just wouldn’t add anything,” Taylor-Joy (a self-described “sucker” for romanticized movie s-x scenes) remarked. “You’re on this journey with her, and the journey is with her mind. There’s not anything physical about it, apart from the abuse that she subjects her body to through substances.”