Apple TV +’s latest female-led thriller is based on a novel by Toronto’s own Marissa Stapley. Lucky was the first Canadian book to be selected by Reese Witherspoon’s book club in 2021, and was later optioned for a series by her production company Hello Sunshine. With Anya Taylor-Joy playing the titular character, Lucky is an empowering story about a young woman fighting to survive after being betrayed by the person she loves most.

“I fell in love with Lucky in the book, but then the more we fleshed out the world she was going to live in, the more the enigma intrigued me,” Taylor-Joy shares with SheDoesTheCity during a press conference. Similarly to Stapley’s novel, Lucky is set up to follow in her father’s (Timothy Olyphant) footsteps at a young age. John is a con artist, used to taking on multiple identities to orchestrate heists, and often including his daughter in his schemes. 

Once John is imprisoned, Lucky and her husband Cary (played by Drew Starkey) carry on with a job he had left unfinished. And that’s when the book-to-screen changes begin. In the source material, Lucky discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, and could be her ticket to starting over somewhere new if she can find a way to cash out the prize without getting caught. 

In the series, the couple orchestrate a heist and obtain the millions of dollars that both John and Priscilla (Cary’s mother, played by Annette Bening) were after. The money is their best chance at breaking the cycle, and leading completely different lives than their parents. This book-to-screen change makes for a thrilling ride, and one that Starkey was excited to venture into. 


“It’s always a gift as an actor to have some type of source material to work on. It’s someone giving you a present very early on and it’s a building block to work off of, but I remember talking to Jonathan [Tropper] and what he offered was a great sense of freedom,” he says. “Oftentimes you have to work within the confines of a character that already has an audience. We got to really play, which was lovely.”

Under this new premise, the protagonist’s fight for survival begins when she wakes up alone in a hotel room, only to discover that her husband is gone and so is the briefcase they had filled with cash. Angry, confused, and certainly devastated, Lucky doesn’t have time to process this betrayal. Left to fend for herself and run away from the authorities, Lucky takes a page out of her father’s book and cons her way out of this mess. 

The Apple TV + series follows Taylor-Joy’s character as she goes from one disguise to the next and smartly escapes from Agent Billie Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and her police squad. She’s also never intimidated by Priscilla’s threats, even if the latter believes that Lucky is to blame for both her son’s disappearance and for stealing the money. Although Priscilla and Lucky don’t necessarily see eye to eye most of the time, they are perfect foils for each other. 

“I think they are both survivors,” Bening says. “She admires Lucky because of that and she also knows that she is a formidable foe. I mean, it’s all about how far you are willing to go to get what you want.”

In Priscilla’s case, she goes to extreme lengths to uncover the truth about the nature of Cary’s getaway and to retrieve the money that could finally get her even with Whittaker (William Fitchner), her criminal boss. After all, she only got out of prison with his help, and is personally indebted to him. “She is both terrified and aggressive, which is, I guess, the essence of bad behaviour,” Bening says.

As for Lucky, she does what she can to let go of a life she never signed up for in the first place. Her con act isn’t an extension of what her father did before getting behind bars, but rather a means to an end. Lucky wants to be a normal person who gets to make decisions for herself outside of the criminal world she is inserted in. 

Throughout the series, the protagonist learns that the only one she can trust is herself. After being betrayed by her husband, the police, and others in her midst, she is ready to take control of her own narrative. Audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with Stapley’s book will be pleased to see the character’s exhilarating journey unfold. 

What was already a page-turning story takes on a life of its own with this Apple TV + adaptation. Taylor-Joy credits the series’ showrunner, Jonathan Tropper, for transporting the characters that readers fell in love with on the page and placing them in “the hottest waters possible.” With Stapley’s seal of approval (and a sequel book in the works), Lucky is the woman-centered crime caper you’ll want to add to your July watch list. 

The first two episodes of Lucky premiere on Apple TV + on July 15, with the remaining episodes premiering on a weekly basis.