Filming The Menu Was A 'Hanxious' Experience For Anya Taylor-Joy
There's nothing more annoying than going on a first date and having your dining partner for the night continually mock and belittle the things you are personally passionate about. It's almost as if they flat-out refuse to try and connect with you from across the table, which is the very thing they supposedly agreed to attempt when they decided to go out with you in the first place. In "The Menu," that situation is completely reversed. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the joyfully disenfranchised Margot (probably not her real name) whose disinterest in the finer things in life — and, by association, her insufferable food-obsessed dinner date Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) — makes her undeniably cool.
Tyler's efforts to impress Margot by taking her to a remote fine dining experience catered by the legendary Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) are completely ignored, as is the delectable amuse-bouche they receive on the boat ride over to the exclusive Hawthorne restaurant. It turns out, Taylor-Joy was positively famished in real life when they were shooting "The Menu" while everyone else was noshing away on set. Staying in character required her to leave her plate of food relatively untouched compared with the other wealthy dinner guests, so she just ate her co-star Nicholas Hoult's food instead.
The meaning of the word 'hanxious'
Looking it up, the word combo "hanxious" can be defined as being horny and anxious, basically meaning that you're nervous about doing the dirty deed. But for Taylor-Joy, it means something else entirely. Speaking recently with Entertainment Weekly, she gave her definition of the term and shared the cruel irony about being hungry when you're making a movie about food:
"I was hungry and waiting for lunch and everybody else was eating constantly throughout the day," she says, with a laugh. "I'm also somebody that gets 'hanxious,' I get very anxious when I'm hungry. So, sometimes I'd have Nick's leftovers, if there were any."
Through all the carefully plated courses of bone marrow, frozen sea water, and aquatic greens, Margot remains unimpressed. Worst of all, she's still hungry even after the exquisite meal is nearing an end. She has one craving in particular that winds up leading to an emotional clash with Chef Slowik that changes the course of her fate once the final course is served.
French chef Dominique Crenn consulted on "The Menu" to help craft the illusion of proper fine cuisine and loosely modeled the experience on her own three Michelin star restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. (I've been lucky enough to eat at the sister restaurant, Petit Crenn, and I assure you it's tremendous and nothing like the life-threatening situation depicted at the fictional Hawthorne establishment.) So, whatever food Taylor-Joy did wind up eating off of Hoult's plate was most likely delicious.
The behavior on display by the guests at Hawthorne is undeniably rude, but Taylor-Joy is hopeful the film will change the way we act in restaurants. "Something that instantly puts an "X" on a person for me is if they treat people that they think are below them badly," she told Eater. "I have no stomach for that."