in. She’s charming, vivacious and thoughtful company,
insisting I try some of her gyoza, complimenting me on my
boots and showing me her latest vintage find — a suede
tasselled jacket scored in Covent Garden that morning. Her
Scottish father, Philip Edgar-Jones, is a Sky executive, while
her Northern Irish mother, Wendy, was a film editor. An only
child, Edgar-Jones is close to them both. Her parents were
benignly supportive, she says, rather than insidery and pushy.
Their sole move was to encourage their drama-mad daughter
to apply to the National Youth Theatre aged 14; from here she
was put forward for an open casting, where she met her agent
and nabbed a role in Cold Feet, which was filmed while she
was at sixth-form college. After that, in 2018, came the British
indie film Pond Life and the miniseries War of the Worlds, then
she began filming Normal People, aged 20.She’s relieved to be back home now (she’s currently living
with her parents but is due to move into a flatshare in
Hornsey, north London, imminently) after a nonstop 2021,
working on three projects back to back in the US and
Canada. One of those was Fresh, a stylish, funny and bloody
horror satire that landed on Disney+ in March to rave
reviews. With shades of Get Out and American Psycho, it is a
literal take on the online-dating meat market. Currently
single after breaking up with the actor Tom Varey, Edgar-
Jones has never used a dating app, but “most of my friends
met their partners through apps, so I’ve had anecdotes for
years”. She’s wary of digital-first dating. “How can you sum
up an entire person in a dating app profile? How do you
condense that? And then we judge on a set of curated
images that aren’t representative of us in the slightest.”
Would she ever? She shakes her head. Sorry, lads ...
Edgar-Jones was drawn to Fresh for its “absurdist gore and
goofy comedy”. Absurd as the film may be, its portrayal of the
everyday violence against women is apposite. It came out
shortly after the first anniversary of the devastating murder of
Sarah Everard, and Edgar-Jones said she thought about Sarah
a lot when filming scenes such as when her character, Noa,
walks towards her car at night, clutching her keys in her fist.
“[Women] have this innate instinct, where we know some-
thing isn’t right, and we so often push it away out of polite-
ness. It’s so normalised, to live with this fear of walking home
at night, holding your keys, having to text your friend when
you get home — and it shouldn’t be. Those little bits of detail
in Fresh are what drew me to it.”
Coming out this summer is W here the Crawdads Sing, the
highly anticipated adaptation of the Delia Owens novel that
has sold more than 10 million copies since its publication
in 2018. It’s set in North Carolina in 1969, with Edgar-Jones as
the teenage “marsh girl” Kya, who is accused of murdering a
local playboy, Chase. Of all the characters she has played in
the past few years, it was Kya who took the biggest toll.
“I didn’t realise how much [that tension] could permeate into
your own life. Your body doesn’t know it’s not real.”
Kya’s loneliness, she says, is something she found particu-
larly pertinent, as she herself was deeply homesick, away
from home for so long. To ease the loneliness she would eat
ramen and watch the reality TV show Below Deck, about
which she is passionate. “It gets into your bones,” she
cautions. “Prepare to lose your life to it.” Her absolute
favourite, though, is Made in Chelsea. “Are you watching the
new series?” she asks, eyes widening. I am. “When Maeva
throws red wine over Sam Prince? Best. Telly. Ever.”From left Edgar-Jones in Fresh with Sebastian Stan; Where the Crawdads Sing; and Under the Banner of HeavenElement Pictures, FX Network, Hulu, Sony PicturesSee Daisy reveal why everyone cried on the set of Normal People in our new video on Style’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/TheSTStyle12 • The Sunday Times Style