Some couples announce. Anya Taylor-Joy and Malcolm McRae do things first and explain later, sometimes two years later. When we first wrote about “the new boyfriend” in July 2022, the internet was studying a ring and asking whether the pair were engaged. As it turned out, they were already married, and nobody had been told.
Here is the whole story as it stands in October 2026, with the receipts. Taylor-Joy is now 30, McRae is 32, and the boyfriend from the old headline has been her husband for four and a half years.
Who Malcolm McRae is, beyond “her husband”
McRae is a musician and actor from Alabama. He is one half of the rock duo more* with Kane Ritchotte, formerly of Portugal. The Man. The band has released two EPs, 1/2 (2020) and 2/2 (2021), and opened for HAIM on their 2022 North American tour. On screen, McRae and Ritchotte played members of the fictional 1970s band The Winters in Daisy Jones & the Six.
My favourite fact about them is a small one. They share a birthday, April 16, two years apart. On The Drew Barrymore Show in 2025, Taylor-Joy said they met in a music studio and that his first question was when her birthday was. When she told him, he said he already knew. (I have heard worse opening lines and so have you.)
“80 years old and 7”: how she talked about him in 2022
The pair were first linked in 2021. Taylor-Joy is famously careful with her private life, so the most revealing thing she said about him came in British Vogue in March 2022: “I’ve finally found someone who will happily sit in silence with me reading. We’re basically 80 years old and 7 at the same time, and it works really well.”
That spring, her Instagram filled with photos of the two of them at a fairground and around their joint birthday. The posts were sweet, and looking back, I read them as a couple leaving clues on purpose, because by then they were already married.
The ring, the bench and the April Fools’ wedding
Our old question was whether they were engaged. The answer turned out to be “yes, and then some.” In a July 2024 Letterboxd interview with Chris Hemsworth, Taylor-Joy said: “My husband accidentally proposed to me on the Forrest Gump bench in Savannah.” She explained, “he’s a boy from Alabama and I’m a blonde—so it just, it just happened.”
In early April 2024 she settled the wedding question herself on Instagram: “Two years ago, on April Fools, I secretly married my best friend in New Orleans.” That puts the wedding on April 1, 2022, three months before the “are they engaged?” headlines, ours included. Reports describe a Southern Gothic party with heart-shaped cakes. My view is that choosing April Fools’ Day for a secret wedding counts as a joke on all of us, and I can’t hold it against them.
Venice, the second time round
The public version came later. ET reported that the couple said “I do” in Venice just before 6 p.m. on a Saturday in late September 2023, in front of guests including Julia Garner and Keleigh Sperry, with brunch the next day on the terrace of the St. Regis above the Grand Canal. Taylor-Joy wore a spaghetti-strap gown and a white veil.
@anyataylorjoy 👽It’s Thursday in Aus so… sending love from the future 👽
ALSO, if you’re looking for a good time in the coming weeks, my heart(s) @moretheband are opening for the coolest sisters @haimtheband on their North American tour from May 22nd – June 14th … the boy…
Most couples get one big day. These two had a private wedding for themselves and a party in a palazzo for everyone else, and I think they got the order right.
Where they are in 2026
Four years in, the jokes are still going. For their fourth anniversary on April 1, 2026, McRae posted photos and a short video and wrote that his wife outdoes him at “almost everything”, before claiming one win: “I dominate in thumb wars.” In March they appeared together at a pre-Oscars Dior dinner in Beverly Hills, and in July they were photographed in Key Biscayne during her press tour.
The tour was for Lucky, Apple TV’s seven-episode limited series, which premiered on July 15, 2026. Taylor-Joy stars in it and is an executive producer. Speaking to Elle UK this summer, she said marriage has given her “a sense of security”, that what waits at home is “nutritive and solid and healthy”, and, a little sheepishly: “I don’t want to sound smug, but I love him so much.”
Asked by People in 2025 about acting opposite him, she said, “It would just have to be the right script.” Wise. A couples’ movie is the one thing that could put the thumb-war record at risk.
My take
In 2022 we asked whether there would be a wedding. There were two, and both happened before we thought to ask. What I like most is how little either of them has performed: a few anniversary posts, a few lines in interviews, and nothing else. The “new boyfriend” from our old headline turned out to be the guy who knew her birthday before she told him.
Sources
- Anya Taylor-Joy on Instagram: Lucky premiere (July 2026)
- Anya Taylor-Joy on Instagram (@anyataylorjoy)
- ET: Anya Taylor-Joy confirms secret marriage in New Orleans (April 2024)
- ET: Anya Taylor-Joy marries Malcolm McRae in Italy (October 2023)
- Marie Claire: the Forrest Gump bench proposal (Letterboxd interview, July 2024)
- Yahoo/Elle UK: Taylor-Joy on marriage and security (July 2026)
- People via AOL: fourth anniversary post (April 2026)
- IANS: how they met, The Drew Barrymore Show (February 2025)
- Apple TV press release: Lucky premiere date
- Lucky, official trailer (Apple TV, YouTube)
