I was like – this could be absolutely crash-and-burn time."
"I was honestly so nervous – that’s when I wished there was a script. "I don’t know how much I slept the night before," says Chan, laughing and shutting her eyes at the thought.
The director Steven Soderbergh decided to keep Chan apart from Streep before filming the pair in his 2020 movie Let Them All Talk, "to make things more interesting" the very first time she met the older actress involved improvising an awkward power struggle while eating a tomato salad in a restaurant. When that person is Meryl Streep, the pressure is on. In two recent projects, Chan has taken parts that require improvisation because, she says, this forces her to be completely in the moment, to draw on a truthful, emotional reaction to the people with whom she’s sharing the scene. As Sersi, she offered an empathetic, unconventional take on a super-heroine in a performance that came swiftly after her turn as the voice of the villainous Namaari, in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. She recently achieved what could be considered the holy grail of Hollywood: landing the lead in a Marvel film – Eternals, a blockbuster that grossed £330 million– after being personally sought out by the studio boss Kevin Feige.
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It isn’t every day you have a picnic with a superstar, as Chan unquestionably is: this year alone, she is in one of the most anticipated films of 2022, Don’t Worry Darling with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, and Extrapolations, the climate-change series with an all-star cast on Apple TV+. Her eyes widen when she happens upon the macarons ("I’ve got my eye on these"), but she goes in for a scone– cream first, then jam a just reward after our ascent. Chan, summer-fresh in a light charcoal Cos jumpsuit, slips off her white Birkenstocks and settles down under a cluster of trees in the dappled shade to help unpack the food. It's the hottest day of the year so far, and Gemma Chan and I are climbing a hill on Hampstead Heath in search of the perfect picnic spot.