Normal? Not Daisy, a gal who swims with gators...
THE 25-metre pool at private Mill Hill school in London is where Daisy Edgar- Jones developed a passion for diving.
And it seems that stood her in good stead when plunging headfirst into alligator- infested swamps during the filming of Where The Crawdads Sing.
Edgar- Jones, who shot to fame in the TV show Normal People, plays the lead in a major new adaptation of the sensationally successful novel by Delia Owens. The book has shifted more than 12 million copies and was optioned by Reese Witherspoon’s production company.
It tells the story of Kya, who is growing up largely alone on a marsh in North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s.
Director Olivia Newman shot the film in the swamps around New Orleans. She said of Edgar- Jones: ‘She loves doing all the work. She learned how to drive a boat; she learned how to fish. She did a lot of movement work, to get really comfortable walking around the marsh barefoot. She loved doing stunts.
‘We were so shocked, because whenever we had a stunt sequence, we’d have our stunt double at the ready — and Daisy would always nail it on her first take.
‘She was a diver in high school and Kya does a lot of swimming and diving and underwater work. And Daisy was just incredible, doing all of her own stunts. I don’t know that there’s anything she can’t do. Truly.
‘I mean, Daisy dives into the water — water that had alligators in it! Of course, we had animal safety, to make sure that it was safe. But she dove into that swamp.’
Newman was familiar with EdgarJones after watching her as Marianne in Normal People — one of the great TV hits of the pandemic.
‘So when her name came up, when we first started talking about who was going to play Kya, I was like: I love this young actress! But can she play a role? Kya is very different from her role in Normal People.
‘And I have to say, her first reading brought all of us to tears — including (author) Delia — because it felt like we were watching Kya’s voice come out of this beautiful British actress. She is incredible with accents. She has an incredible knack for dialects.’ Jojo Regina plays Kya as a child.
The film comes out in July and features an original song, Carolina, by Taylor Swift.