Anya wins a big role . . . in The Miniaturist

RISING star anya TaylorJoy has clinched the coveted lead role in the threepart BBC dramatisation of Jessie Burton’s bestseller The Miniaturist. Burton’s pageturner was a summer sensation three years ago, and has sold millions of copies in 30 languages since.

anya (right, in the role), who has made six movies in two years, including art house success The Witch and box office hit Split, has started filming the 17thcentury thriller about 18yearold Petronella Oortman, who is married off to Johannes Brandt, a wealthy trader who lives in a grand amsterdam house with his sister Marin.

alex Hassell (inset), a royal Shakespeare Company leading man who appears in george Clooney’s new film Sub urbicon, will play Brandt, with romola garai as Marin.

The story follows what happens when Brandt orders a beautiful doll’shouse copy of their home; and Petronella commissions a miniaturist to furnish the replica.

‘it’s the journey of a girl into womanhood,’ anya told me.

Petronella goes from initial isolation, and is able to gain confidence to ‘break out of societal confines’, she said.

it’s a big break for the young actress, now 20, who was born and raised in Buenos aires until she was six years old.

She left school at 16 to become an actress. The Witch was her first movie. Directors have been queueing up to work with her, but a (hopefully) popular primetime BBC costume drama will catapult her into living rooms around the world. The BBC production is being produced by British company The Forge and the american Masterpiece channel. anya said she grew up watching recordings of movies over and over, her favourite being Thelma & Louise. ‘There was something in the way it was shot, and i was so entrenched in the friendship of those two women,’ she told me. She loves film sets, and studios, and the friendships that develop on location. ‘i’m into sharing the kind of nakedness of everybody,’ she said.

The TV adaptation of The Miniaturist, by John Brownlow, is based solely on Burton’s book, in which the author took a historical character and imagined her life. The real Petronella did have a doll’shouse, now in a Dutch museum.

The drama also features Hayley Squires, emily Berrington and another rSC man, Paapa essiedu.