Long GAME

TAYLOR RUSSELL is PERFECTLY POSITIONED to BECOME HOLLYWOOD'S next IT GIRL. But she has HER EYES on a BIGGER PRIZE.

- MUNA MIRE

The harp is anchored by a carved wooden pillar that is more than four feet tall, sometimes topped with an ornate decorative crown. At the bottom is a soundboard, and at the top is a harmonically curved neck. In between are dozens of strings with a range spanning six and a half octaves. It's celestial, elegant, and incredibly delicate-harps are notoriously finicky about temperature and upkeep-making the instrument complex not only to play but also to maintain.

During the early days of pandemic lockdown, while some of us were hoarding plants or feeding sourdough starters, 28-year-old Canadian actor Taylor Russell took up the harp. "I wanted to play it for a very long time," she explains. "I was like, 'What's the one instrument that none of my neighbors are going to hate hearing?'" Russell was living in New York at the time, and everyone was stuck indoors. "It's the harp. It could never be annoying. It's such a beautiful, calming thing," she says. Russell signed up for virtual lessons and rented a harp. (The first song she learned to play was "Creep" by Radiohead.) Three years later, her enthusiasm and commitment have not dimmed. She's just finished Mother Couch!, a dark comedy in which she costars alongside Ellen Burstyn and Ewan McGregor, and she is buying one as a wrap gift to herself. "You can't leave a harp at home and travel. You have to really take care of it and tend to it daily because the strings break and it can't be in a certain temperature," she says. "It's so sensitive."