'Where The Crawdads Sing': Being a cast away isn’t for Daisy Edgar-Jones (exclusive)

Watch: Daisy Edgar-Jones on how she'd cope as a castaway

Daisy Edgar-Jones has swapped the complex relationships of Normal People and Fresh for a more solitary role in her latest film, Where The Crawdads Sing.

Her character, Kya, lives alone, miles from anybody on the marshlands of North Carolina. But, even though the British actor is an only child, she doesn’t think she’d cope with such isolation.

Edgar-Jones, who’s had a meteoric rise in the past two years, was speaking to Yahoo ahead of the film’s UK release on 22 July, and recalled spending 'a lot of time growing up on my own.'

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"Obviously my parents did hang out with me and they were great, but I had to make my own fun a lot of the time.”

Her upbringing without brothers or sisters means that, in her own words, she’s 'not too bad' with her own company, but more extreme solitude, such as being cast away on a desert island, would be a step too far.

“I’m not very great with insects and things like that. I’m not sure I’d fare very well, to be honest.”

Those insects made their presence felt during location filming for Where The Crawdads Sing. “There was definitely an encounter with a creepy crawly that I wouldn’t want to re-live,” she recalls.

“But it was also very helpful for getting into the character. She grows up on her own and lives in a dangerous environment. It’s an interesting backdrop for the murder mystery aspect of the story, this dark marshland. I loved being there and filming there.

Watch a trailer for Where The Crawdads Sing

"You couldn’t ignore the nature. Everywhere you looked, there were insects and animals that I’d never seen before – alligators and things like that.”

The adaptation of Delia Owens’ best seller follows Edgar-Jones’ character, Kya, as she grows up alone in the marshes, copes with hostility from the local townsfolk and uses her talent as an artist to earn a living.

Read more: Fresh highlights the 'general day to day anxiety of women'

At the same time, believing she’s been abandoned by her first teenage love, Tate (Taylor John Smith), she falls prey to the charms of the smooth talking Chase (Harris Dickinson). When he’s found murdered, she quickly becomes the obvious suspect.

The marshland setting also meant Edgar-Jones diving in for several underwater sequences. She admits she likes swimming and those scenes “looked really beautiful, but the actual process isn’t as much fun. The reality is a huge amount of water up your nose!”

The week after Where The Crawdads Sing hits cinemas, she’s back on small screens in the UK in the much-anticipated Under The Banner Of Heaven (streaming on Disney+ from 27 July).

Based on a true life murder from the 1980s among the Mormon community of Utah, it also stars Andrew Garfield as a detective investigating the case. Edgar-Jones’ scenes are all shown in flashback.

Where The Crawdads Sing releases exclusively at cinemas on 22 July, 2022. Watch a trailer below.