Anya Taylor-Joy is one of the most exciting young movie stars working right now. Most recently, she voiced Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Next, she will star in and executive produce the Apple TV limited series Lucky, a crime thriller premiering July 15, 2026, alongside Annette Bening and Timothy Olyphant. Taylor-Joy had her breakthrough role in Robert Eggers‘ The Witch in 2015 and became a true household name in 2020 with Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. In between these monumental roles, however, she gave an underrated performance in the PBS Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Miniaturist.
What Is ‘The Miniaturist’ About?
The Miniaturist is based on the novel of the same name by Jessie Burton, inspired by a real-life intricate dollhouse that can be seen in a museum in Amsterdam. The dollhouse was owned by a woman named Petronella Oortman, and Burton used the name for her novel, but the story is entirely fictional. Like the novel, the miniseries is a 17th-century period drama that takes place in the Netherlands. Taylor-Joy plays Nella Oortman, a young woman who must marry a much older man so that her family can pay off their debts.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I’m watching one kind of film and then reveals I’m watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I’m watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you’re still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I’m living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I’m still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you’re watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what’s left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn’t scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I’ve just seen something I can’t fully explain but can’t stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I’ve been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I’ve just seen cinema doing something it’s never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
Nella’s new husband, Johannes Brandt (Hassell), is a closeted gay man. Part of him wants to be a good husband for Nella, but in his mind, all a good husband needs to do is be a provider. He doesn’t notice Nella’s deep loneliness and need for intimacy and companionship.
As a wedding gift, Johannes gives Nella a cabinet for her to decorate as a dollhouse. Nella puts in a request with a miniaturist for three items for the dollhouse, but she mysteriously receives extra items. What makes the mystery creepier is that these items correspond perfectly to items in her new home. The gifts from an unseen miniaturist who seems to know all the secrets of Nella’s household make for an intriguing setup. But, ultimately, The Miniaturist is more about exploring the characters’ inner tragedies rather than telling a traditional mystery story.
Anya Taylor-Joy Is Quietly Heartbreaking in ‘The Miniaturist’
Anya Taylor-Joy gives a quietly heartbreaking performance as Nella. The Miniaturist portrays a time when women often had very little agency, especially if they were from a poor family like Nella’s. At first, she accepts her fate and sincerely tries to make the best of a bad situation. In the first episode, Nella goes out of her way to react to everything with politeness and good humor, only showing subtle disappointment when her sister-in-law Marin Brandt (Romola Garai), is cold, or her husband is evasive and secretive.
However, Taylor-Joy makes the smallest reactions hit hard. Over time, Nella’s determination to assert herself and her desires grows, despite the confines of her role in society. Taylor-Joy does an excellent job of showing this young woman gradually working up the confidence to demand that Johannes treat her more like a wife than an object. Alex Hassell brings the same bawdy charm to this series that he does to Rivals, offering a stark contrast to Taylor-Joy’s quietly despairing performance as Nella.
The juxtaposing energies work well and Nella’s scenes with Johannes are the most interesting in the show. The two actors light up with chemistry when their characters have a moment of friendship or solidarity, making it more frustrating when Johannes pulls back from his wife. Hassell makes Johannes sympathetic, warm, and funny, but then brutally depicts an evasive side that’s obviously contributing to Nella’s isolation. The viewer goes back and forth right along with Nella as she goes from finding her new husband charming to frustrating.
‘The Miniaturist’ Has Detailed Production and Costume Design
In addition to the captivating lead performance from Anya Taylor-Joy and the stellar supporting cast, a highlight of The Miniaturist is in the details of the production design and costuming. The show brings the 17th century to life very well, which can be expected from Masterpiece Theater. It’s the details that make this production stand out. A brilliant touch in the costuming is how poorly Nella’s new dresses fit her, a clear sign that her husband and sister-in-law aren’t interested in her as a person and see her as just a generic wife.
Unsurprisingly, the true biggest strength in the production is the miniatures themselves, which are beautifully crafted. Few other projects hinge so much on the props. Even while Nella is horrified by the creepy detail with which the miniaturist replicates items in her private home, it’s also clear she’s in awe of the objects. This show wouldn’t work without the miniatures popping on screen. The production nailed it, and it’s exciting each time Nella unwraps one of the miniaturist’s mysterious gifts.
If you’ve already seen Anya Taylor-Joy in period dramas like The Queen’s Gambit, Peaky Blinders, and Emma, The Miniaturist should be your next binge. While it doesn’t have as strong an adapted screenplay as many other Masterpiece Theater miniseries, the core relationship between Nella and Johannes — two outsiders who can’t connect despite sharing a deep loneliness — is enough to make the story compelling even when their dialogue isn’t as clever as it could be. It’s the performances and the beautiful details in the production that bring this story to life and make it worth watching.
The Miniaturist is available to stream on the PBS Masterpiece Amazon Channel in the U.S.
Release Date
2017 – 2018-00-00
Network
BBC One
Directors
Guillem Morales
Writers
John Brownlow
