Kaya Scodelario On Her Brazilian Heritage, British Brands And How Her Husband Proposed With A Cartier Love Bracelet

Kaya Scodelario has done a lot with her 27 years on the Earth. Her breakthrough acting role, as the surly Effy Stonem on E4's controversial teen drama Skins, catapulted her into the spotlight, with her fame rising steadily and surely after that.

In 2017, she hit the big time, cast in huge Hollywood blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and, even more recently, the much anticipated Ted Bundy biopic, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, in which she plays Carole Ann Boone, Bundy's ex-wife.

It's not just acting chops that have burnished Scodelario's brightly shining star. She was this year asked to interpret fine jewellery powerhouse Cartier's 'Clash de Cartier,' a collection that shakes up the heritage of the Maison.

She was given the job on the basis of her dual heritage; something which has, until now, been little discussed in the media.

'When I took the initial meeting with Cartier,' says Scodelario, 'they felt that I represented the duality of the collection, because of my heritage, being half-Brazillian, half-British and that’s something I have never really had the chance to celebrate publicly before. It really inspired me to embrace that other side of me and it’s true, I do have two quite distinct personalities.

'So I really loved that there is a story that they wanted me to tell.'

Speaking of her husband, Scodelario let's us in on a secret. Namely, that her husband Benjamin, now known in full as Benjamin Walker Scodelario-Davis, actually proposed with something other than an engagement ring.

'I never had any family heirlooms,' she says. 'Nothing that was ever passed down to me and so, when I met my husband and we were falling in love, he actually bought me a Cartier Love bracelet, for our first Christmas together. He says that it was then that he realised that he actually wanted to buy me an engagement ring, so he sort of weirdly proposed with a Love bangle.'

Speaking to ELLE at a party in Paris, Scodelario cuts an impressively chic figure in a black Alaïa gown, cropped leather jacket and necklace and earrings from the Cartier collection.

Despite wearing one of late Tunisian-born designer Alaïa's creations for the event, Scodelario is still loyal to the British high street.

'I still love British brands,' she says, 'from very high up, right down to Topshop - that's what I am most comfortable in, especially when I am travelling a lot.'

Kaya with her husband Benjamin

And travelling is something that Scodelario seems to be doing literally non-stop. With a filming schedule that's recently included starring opposite Zac Efron's Ted Bundy, but also appearing in a horror film called Crawl and a Netflix series called Spinning Out in which she plays a bi-polar figure skater, it's a wonder Scodelario ever has time to relax.

'I did a month’s training before [Spinning Out],' she adds when we enquire just how busy her schedule has become, 'every day at Ally Pally in North London. And now, I train almost every day at lunch time, because we are always shooting in the ice rink anyway. We have an amazing coach, Sarah Kawahara who choreographed I, Tonya. She’s awesome.'

'Extremely Wicked Incredibly Evil and Vile was really, really different for me,' she continues of her acting career. 'It was a really wonderful experience to play someone that was living and breathing and that I could research and that I could recreate in my own way. That’s a very dark, messed up story. A really interesting perspective, an important perspective, to have it told through the eyes of the women who were infatuated with him and try to understand why.'

On the subject of the female perspective, Scodelario has been greatly inspired by the Time's Up movement, even using it as a springboard to request certain things as prerequisite for taking on new roles.

'It has definitely empowered me,' she says. 'I requested that we have an 'intimacy coach' on the set of the Netflix series. That's something that I would have loved to have had during Skins. I would have felt safer and more in control and empowered and able to speak up if I had been uncomfortable. I feel optimistic for my son’s generation, I just hope that we continue to keep on having the conversation.'

'I have an incredible group of women around me,' she elaborates, 'my two best friends Hannah and Paige who are here with me now. They kind of save me every day. Back in England, Larissa Wilson - who was with me in Skins - and I have set-up a female writers group. We talk about writing, we talk about poetry, but then we also just talk and we have this beautiful safe space where we all come out of it feeling really energised and heard and empowered.'

To conclude, Scodelario is buoyed by this ongoing wave of feminism globally, saying: 'It's very different now. It's starting to change. On Spinning Out, for example, we have an amazing female-heavy show, with female director, female writers, so the vibe feels really great on that and that’s very rare. That’s my sisterhood, my writers group and my girlfriends.'

The Clash de Cartier collection is available now. LEARN MORE