When Isla Johnston received her A-level results last August, she was still processing bigger news: being cast as Joan of Arc in Baz Luhrmann’s Warner Bros-backed biopic of the 15th-century French heroine. “I remember opening those results and going back to sleep,” says Johnston, with a laugh. University was off the table.
Instead, the 19-year-old has immersed herself in preparations for Jehanne D’Arc, which will shoot next year. Johnston’s rural childhood on a farm in Suffolk gave her one advantage: “Luckily, I have ridden horses all my life,” she explains.
The actress is also reading voraciously, including Thomas Keneally’s 1974 novel Blood Red, Sister Rose, a source for Luhrmann and co-writer Ava Pickett. Johnston has her own view of the teenage radical: “She was just a teen trying to get her voice heard in a patriarchal society not built for her.”
Before stepping into Joan’s armour, Johnston has shot a role in the second series of Netflix crime thriller Dept. Q — reuniting with showrunner Scott Frank, who directed her as young Beth in 2020’s The Queen’s Gambit when she was 12. “He’s an industry father-figure to me,” she says.
The success of The Queen’s Gambit meant Johnston spent her teen years shooting a handful of supporting roles for film and TV, including playing the devil opposite Nicolas Cage in 2025’s The Carpenter’s Son (one critic declared her “one of the great screen Satans”). But “acting was still a hobby — I wanted to focus on friends and living a normal life”.
After a “long process”, which included two “incredible” three-hour workshops with the director, Luhrmann called Johnston last summer to offer her Joan. “All I could muster was, ‘Are you sure?’ For over a month, I couldn’t tell anyone. Obviously, I told my parents. But not my younger brother as he couldn’t keep his mouth shut!” Only now does she think of acting as a career. “For the first time, when people ask, ‘What do you do?’, I feel I can say, ‘I’m an actor.’”
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