CinemaBravo

When it came to casting the role of tech billionaire Slater King in her feature film directorial debut “Blink Twice,” Zoë Kravitz had her sights set on Channing Tatum from the start. Although she didn’t know him personally at the time, she envisioned him stepping into a role unlike anything he had ever done before, believing he would be the perfect fit for Slater. Tatum’s naturally good-natured charm was seen as the key to drawing in both the audience and the character Frida (played by Naomi Ackie) into the film’s enigmatic island setting.

This new psychological thriller film is now playing in Philippine cinemas as distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Discovery company.

Finding her Frida was a “whole other journey” for Kravitz. “It’s a hard part,” Kravitz says. “She’s many things at once. You kind of never really get a real handle on who she is. How manipulative is she? How unaware? Is she the villain? Is she the victim? There’s so many different elements to that character.” Casting director Carmen Cuba offered up an option: Naomi Ackie, star of films like “Lady Macbeth” and “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Kravitz was not as familiar with Ackie’s work, but once she watched her projects like “Master of None” and “The End of the F***ing World” she was blown away. “I was like, ‘What a beast!’” Kravitz says. “And also her face is like so cinematic.”

Ackie remembers that what was supposed to be an initial chat with Kravitz turned into a two-hour conversation around the ideas of the film. “There was a lot that conversation brought up for me around the idea of the pursuit of power, about sexual assault, but also about Frida’s want for something more,” Ackie says. “Her relationship with the symbol of power that is Slater, how that affects her and that gives her blind spots to certain things. There’s many different things going on at the same time about how people are interacting with each other when it comes to these ideas of status and money, and they’re all abusing it in one way or another. We talked about Frida as quite an interesting, imperfect character, and how that made her a really interesting victim.”

In Tatum, Ackie found a supportive partner to play off. “I think there was an awareness for both of us that we were tapping into some really hard sh*t,” Ackie says. “His character as this awful guy who does really f***ing awful things, and my character as someone who is suffering from those awful things. Those aren’t easy, so we had to balance it with silliness and goofiness and making sure that everyone felt safe.”

Of Ackie, Tatum says she’s “probably one of the more talented people I’ve worked with.” He adds: “You walk into a scene and you’re like, man, this is kind of a hard scene. And she’ll just walk right through it. Like, not a problem at all.”

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Photo Credit: “Warner Bros. Pictures”