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For Daisy Edgar-Jones, Life Is But a Dream
The actor immerses herself in the nostalgic glamour and ease of Gucci’s Lido 2025 collection.
When I catch Daisy Edgar-Jones for this interview, it’s one of those unseasonably warm New York days where the whole city comes alive, activated by the promise of summer. She is en route back to the city, where she’s living for the next few months filming a new role, buzzing off the magic of this shoot (which took place slightly upstate at a historic mid-century house on Petra Island) and the release of her most recent film, a quietly hedonistic drama set in 1950s Southern California.
“I’m a huge romantic,” she says, gushing over this latest project, which hit theaters the week that we speak. “It’s a gorgeous exploration of love and sexuality as a young person, and I’m really proud of it.”
Throughout the film, Edgar-Jones is styled in Old Hollywood-style glamorous scarves — not unlike those from the House’s collection seen here — leveraging her wholesome, ’50s housewife look to mask a simmering queer yearning and a burgeoning gambling habit. This is a dream role for her.
“We’re all incredibly complex and flawed and humans, and those are the qualities I’m most drawn to,” she states, reflecting on her decade-long career playing layered, complicated young women. “I think that’s what I find the most interesting about film: the opportunity to explore the inner life.”
This sentiment aligns well with the Gucci Lido collection, which pays homage to the themes so central to the House – the Interlocking G logo, the Horsebit, the use of full-bleed color – but reimagined for 2025, which is anything but straightforward. We have, ovviamente, summery resort wear, but the character evoked with each look feels like she has something delicious hiding in her basket-weave purse, or under her head scarves and oversized sunglasses.
To accentuate this idea, Daisy Edgar-Jones stars in the accompanying campaign shot by photographer Jim Goldberg, which references his own work from the 1980s: a series of striking black and white portraits juxtaposed by written musings from each subject. One shot, featuring a blonde beauty in repose on summer vacation, is captioned in her own hand: “I like to be attractive and distant. I love the games, intrigue and mystery of being a woman. True femininity is a great deal of power.”
This commanding female essence has been the through-line of most of Edgar-Jones’s defining on-screen work. “I’ve been allowed to play real women,” she says with gratitude, acknowledging the fact that it does feel as though mainstream Hollywood has only recently granted permission for these stories to be told on the big screen. “Even in the larger-than-life commercial movie I starred in last summer, my character had quite a moving journey of grief and loss, losing her sense of self and coming back to it… It’s really exciting to be in a time where women like this take the lead.”
There’s such depth to every Daisy Edgar-Jones character that it’s hard to believe she’s only 26, which is perhaps explained by the fact that she got her big break starring in a sensual television series that debuted in the heated dog years of the pandemic.
“I always feel so green. I’m still learning so much,” Edgar-Jones admits, reminding me that she was only 21 when her career started to explode. “The pandemic will always be a wild time to think back on for everyone – but for me, it was strange because I came into it one way and left another … Paul [Mescal, her co-star, also a friend of Gucci] texted me the other day and was like, ‘Dais, that came out 5 years ago,’ which is just so crazy.”
As for the future, she has a lot to look forward to: enmeshing herself New York’s Lower East Side, a summer filming “in the green rolling hills of the British countryside”, and a birthday. Does she relate to her conflicted sun sign, Gemini?
“It always gets a bit of an ‘oooh’ reaction,” she says with a laugh. “But I think – I hope – I'm one of the good ones. I think maybe Gemini’s duality that people always ‘oooh’ about comes into my acting; I like slipping into different personalities and roles in the job.” But in real life… “I’m pretty straightforward.”
This is perhaps best exemplified by her heartwarmingly simple answer to a question, inspired by the Gucci Lido campaign, about an ideal summer day.
“The perfect summer day, for me, is getting up really early, getting a coffee, walking around Hampstead Heath, sitting by the ponds, watching people pass by and swim…” she says with a light-heartedness that stands in opposition to her oftentimes moody characters. “...Having a pint in the sun in a pub, then going out dancing somewhere in East London. That would be gorgeous.”
A day like this would be a well-deserved break from her approach to acting, which, she admits, is something she has no choice but to go into with laser-sharp focus.
“When I'm on a job I get quite obsessed by it and find it hard to let myself relax,” she says. “Filmmaking is funny because you have one day, one take, one scene to get it right.” It’s a lot of pressure, but she’s used to it after nearly a lifetime of training. Her early summer memories are not centered around long days at the beach or first kisses at camp, but from hours spent at the National Youth Theatre, which is what got her into the industry.
“Whenever I'm working, I go fully into the project,” she says, explaining that she really doesn’t have any rituals that take her out of “hermit mode” while filming. Instead, she dives deeper. “I love the part of the job that allows you to research an area of life or the world that you would never otherwise explore. I know an insane amount about weather formations and tornadoes now, which I don't know will ever come in handy in East London,” she laughs.
With such an emphasis on work and commitment, though, Daisy Edgar-Jones masterfully maintains her bubbly spirit that audiences and movie producers alike have fallen in love with.
“My dad has this phrase ‘Take it seriously, but wear it lightly’, which can be applied everywhere,” (say, these Gucci looks), “But especially in this job. Work really hard, take it seriously. But try not to let it get too heavy. Be light-hearted in spirit. Wear it lightly.”
