‘I’ve shown so much of myself to the world’: The Witcher’s Anya Chalotra on power, people-watching and being a perfectionist

Anya Chalotra is watching me. I have half-threatened to order a Venezuelan sandwich from the chalkboard at the London café we’re in – we are talking just after lunch – but I don’t trust myself to maintain a serious line of questioning and not get guacamole down my front while doing it. “Are you sure? I don’t mind,” she says. No it’s fine, Anya, please. Later, the café owner tours the tables to tell us they are closing in 20 minutes. “And what about your sandwich?” Anya points to me. Honestly, please, I had a flapjack, it was hearty. And after the interview: “Do you want to stay and have your sandwich now?” I mean I would, but they are closed, so it’s too late now, isn’t it?

Lunch aside, the point is that Anya Chalotra is a gifted and enthusiastic people-watcher. She confesses to this up front: “I’m obsessed with people,” she says, not sounding like a serial killer, “and I’m obsessed with analysing people.” But it bulges out of every anecdote she gives, too. On being recognised in public: “Oh, I’m always stuffing my face. They always come up to me when I’m stuffing my face. Because I don’t mind going to the pub on my own, or eating on my own traversed magically across continents: “The whole crew was in the sea, jeans rolled up, or wearing trunks. And I don’t know how I wasn’t cracking up, looking at all these people in their jazzy little trunks. It was quite a serious moment.” On east London parks, an objective ranking thereof: “Victoria Park. Always. The dog-watching there is hilarious. I just find their mothers’ meetings, in the park, hysterical.”