JOAN OF ARC Star Isla Johnston for VOGUE’s September Digital Cover

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For VOGUE’s September digital cover story, Chloe Schama sits down with Isla Johnston, who will play Joan of Arc in Baz Luhrmann’s historical epic he’s planning to shoot next year.

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[…] her life really changed at 11, when she earned a role of Beth Harmon in the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit, a volatile orphan who is also a chess genius (the adult version of Beth would be played by Anya Taylor-Joy). “I was so new to all of it,” Johnston says. “They were like, ‘Do you want a wig or do you want to cut your hair?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, cut it. It’s fine. It’ll grow back. Let’s go ginger.’ And then I was ginger for four years after that.”

When Johnston thinks about the filming to come, “obviously, there’s the physical challenges—the fighting and the riding,” she says to me, “but I can learn that and I can work on that.” The thing that intimidates and excites her is the story’s improbability. When she was in school, she tells me, her peers thought about Joan of Arc the way they thought about Robin Hood—someone so unlikely that she must have been made up. “No one in history quite knows how she did what she did.”

Fashion Credits:
Cover: Maison Margiela Cardigan
Image 1: McQueen Jumpsuit | Messika Necklace | Proenza Schouler Gloves
Image 2: Loewe Dress

Writer: Chloe Schama
Photographer: Norman Jean Roy
Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman
Hair: Shay Ashual
Makeup: Mark Carrasquillo

[Photo Credit: Norman Jean Roy for Vogue Magazine]

• Alexander McQueen
• Editorials
• Isla Johnston
• Loewe
• Magazines
• Maison Margiela
• Mark Carrasquillo
• Messika
• Norman Jean Roy
• Proenza Schouler
• Shay Ashual
• Tonne Goodman
• Vogue