Blink Twice: Zoë Kravitz and Naomi Ackie on Making People the Right Kind of Uncomfortable and How Channing Tatum Helped Change the Ending

Spoilers ahead for Blink Twice.

“This is how hardworking Naomi Ackie is,” begins her director, Zoë Kravitz. “We had been working her into the ground on a night shoot. We’re blocking the scene where someone has a gun to her head. She hadn’t eaten, and I was like, ‘I’m going to get you a sandwich. Just get up and eat for a second.’ And she’s like, ‘No, no, no, just pass it to me.’ So I have this picture of her on the ground, in the dirt, with one hand being held behind her back and a gun to her head—and the other hand has a sandwich in it.” She grins in disbelief. “Hardest working woman in show business.”

Perhaps that stark image—weapon to the head, lunch in hand—best encapsulates a movie like Blink Twice, Kravitz’s directorial debut now in theaters. Ackie stars as Frida, whose taste for adventure leads her to accept an invitation from Channing Tatum’s disgraced tech CEO Slater King to his private island. Frida jokes, “Blink twice if I’m in danger,” upon meeting Slater. Still, she feels protected by the presence of her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), who quips, “So do you think the human sacrifice is before or after dinner?”

There are no phones, but Slater assures them that they don’t have to do anything they don’t want. “We do drugs, but we just do them with intention,” he says. Plus, there are other friendly, if unfamiliar faces on the spontaneous getaway. Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex, and Kyle MacLachlan, who plays Slater’s therapist, portray the men in Slater’s orbit. There are women too, including Hit Man breakout Adria Arjona, as a recovering former reality star and Geena Davis, as Slater’s assistant, who eagerly reminds Frida, “Relax, you’re on vacation.”

But when Frida and her fellow female visitors notice unexplained injuries on their bodies, the trip warps into a #MeToo nightmare that has drawn comparisons to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. “When things are good,” says Frida, “that’s when the bad stuff is about to happen.” In spite of the film’s dark underbelly, which has already yielded a trigger warning from Amazon MGM Studios, laughter flows freely between Kravitz and Ackie during a recent conversation with Vanity Fair.

The movie brought Kravitz to her now-fiancé Tatum, as well as making her “instantly very close” with her leading lady. “Do you remember the Gabrielle Union nose scrunch?” Ackie says. “It was my favorite thing.” At which point, they both devolve into laughter. “I was trying to direct you to be bitchier, to be bitchy in this specific way,” Kravitz says. “Then she was like, ‘Oh, Gabrielle Union nose scrunch.’” I was like, ‘Yes!’” They giggle some more. “Anyway, you maybe think we’re crazy right now, but we know what we’re talking about, and that’s why we’re friends.”

Ackie and Kravitz in London.Dave Benett

Vanity Fair: Zoë, at the film’s premiere you thanked Channing for offering support when you thought you’d “fucked it all up.” When did you feel the most unsure about what you were making?

Kravitz: The whole time. Just every single day, I think. The first couple days of shooting are the hardest because you’re just like, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” Then when you watch your assembly [cut], when they’re like, “Here’s what you shot,” you’re like, “Yikes, dude. Yikes.” Because it’s just the raw footage and there’s no rhythm to it and there’s too much and it’s three hours and it doesn’t make sense. I wanted to put myself in a trash can.

As a devoted fan of Hulu’s High Fidelity, I was excited to see that you cowrote this film with E.T. Feigenbaum, a writer on that series. But the origins of this movie pre-date that show. At what point do you invite someone into the writing process and why was E.T. the right person?

Kravitz: The first thing I wrote down was just Pussy Island—which was the original title—not really knowing what it meant, but just having this feeling. Pussy Island was the feeling. I wrote this insane novella, this stream of consciousness with the characters of Frida and Slater King and this place and wanting to explore the garden of Eden.

I wrote this insane thing, and then Eric is a friend of mine, who I know from Brooklyn. He lives near my house and he had written a few scripts that he’d shown me before. He hadn’t done a lot of writing either, but I knew that he wanted to write, and I think he’s talented. So I sent him this novella and thought, “Do you want to do this with me and we can learn together?” I would walk to his house every day and we would sit across from each other at the table and his amazing wife would make us snacks and we’d sit together for five hours a day and wrote for years.

You could talk about topics as fraught as these forever. How do you know when the script is finished?

Kravitz: I was like, “Naomi, here’s the new scene we’re shooting right now.” We were rewriting the whole time, so that never ended. But specifically because of the topic of the film, we basically had to rewrite so many times because the culture and the conversation and what the characters would be aware of and how they would experience things kept changing. That was the most difficult part—and also part of the fun, too—of the film and the story being this living, breathing thing.

I do think we got it to the place where it felt current. We got to the place where we felt, “Yeah, this is a conversation that we still think has not necessarily happened.”

Naomi, how do you initially react to a script called Pussy Island?

Ackie: I was so down. Seriously. “Zoë Kravitz, Pussy Island.” Where do I sign? Then I was like, “Okay, cool. I have to read it before I chat to her.” When I read it, I had so many thoughts. There’s so many different layers to this. You can be like, “Oh, okay, don’t go to a private island—cool.” We all know, don’t speak to strangers. But beyond that, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. It encouraged conversation. When we had our conversation, there was so much to talk about.

Kravitz: And you got it so quickly. The tone is so specific. Some people read this and we were just like, “This is crazy, dude.” And for you to get it so easily, it was like, “Oh, of course. This is my Frida.”

Ackie: Do you remember when I was like, “Please, can I do it?”

Kravitz: And I was like, “Oh, are we not on the same page? Bitch, you’ve been cast since the beginning of this conversation. You were cast, like, yesterday.” We met for the first time in New York—we had tacos and hung out in Brooklyn. You came over to my house, we were just talking shit until the sun came up. It was great. I love you.

Ackie: It was perfect. And I feel like it just continued that way. Then we got to do that in Mexico. And the fact that we did it together? Oh my God. Fucking hell. Sorry. Should I not swear on Vanity Fair?

Naomi, viewers experience so much of the story through close-ups of your incredibly expressive face. What was it like to watch the film for the first time and how do you feel about watching yourself in general?

Ackie: It’s complicated. It’s really complicated with this one though. I went to a London screening—me, Alia [Shawkat] and Zoë—she was so nervous.

Kravitz: I was so nervous. I was like, “That was good. But I’m just going to have this drink…” All I really care about is my actors being proud of what we made.

Ackie: So we watched it together. And that to me was like, “Okay, sisterhood, cool.” That’s a safe space to explore this. I actually don’t need to judge myself in any way because you’re just not judging me, this is safe. And oh my God, the joy of being able to watch it, because this is a huge celebration of self, I think, for you, Zoë. For me, I know that in terms of performances, this is so different. It pushed me into a different aspect of myself that Zoë brought out in me. I don’t know how.

Kravitz: Wasn’t that hard.

Ackie in Blink Twice.Carlos Somonte

Ackie: The camera being so close, it’s really exposing, but it’s also quite freeing. Because it’s not like, I can’t hide, but I don’t need to hide. I just need to be whatever this thing needs it to be. The second time around watching it, I had my boyfriend grabbing my leg. My cousin was like, “Oh!” And I was like, “Yes.”

Kravitz: I looked over at you during the Beyoncé song and we were both like [imitates dancing].

Ackie: Because the biggest joy is to be able to tell a story and then share it. It doesn’t belong to us anymore. It’s everyone else’s. And they get to take from it what they want. Then you go, “Okay, cool. Be free. Go and do your thing.” You retreat and watch this thing go.

Kravitz: We sent our little baby to college.

Ackie: With a backpack on.

Going into this project, I know Channing had been taking an acting break and Naomi, you had paused after playing Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance With Somebody. How did those resets help star in something as intense as Blink Twice?

Ackie: Had I gone straight from Whitney, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do what I did. I might. Some actors who are incredible at doing that—super dynamic and super busy and really cool. But the way my mind works, I need to—

Kravitz: Let it go. I think also, specifically playing Whitney, you’re playing a person and you became her and you have to literally [change] the way you speak. It’s not just playing a version of yourself.

Ackie: Yeah, it was weird. Obviously we didn’t have the same accent, but my cadence also slightly changed—the pattern in which I would talk in my own accent. Also there’s a decompression after that amount of time and energy output. If I expel too much, then I burn out. So that six months was really important. It gave me the space to learn from some of the mistakes I had made during Whitney and that process, which mainly was being too hard on myself.

So I’ve just come down, I’m back in a good mental health space, and when we went into it, I was like, “Hey, me, you’re going to have some fun.” Do you know what I mean? You’re going to work hard, but working hard can be fun and you are going to make sure that you interact and absorb and enjoy. So with that intention, I went onto that set being like, “This is the summer of a lifetime.”

Zoë, you’ve said that this is not a story about empowerment, but about power. Is there a scene you think exemplifies this idea the most?

Kravitz: Probably the ending of the film. Frida doesn’t want Slater King, she wants to be Slater King. Power is this thing that she’s so attracted to, and that’s the reason she goes to this island. To be told to be invisible, and then to be seen by the person that everybody looks at—that’s the thing that it’s about. That’s what she wants. When talking about women, we talk about empowerment and there’s something that feels cuter about that. Power feels masculine and empowerment feels feminine. So I want to start using the word power when talking about women.

Ackie: Not to be shy about power. It isn’t something that solely belongs to men. We talk about men a lot.

Kravitz: The powerful man.

Ackie: They’re power-hungry and powerful—but women have those same instincts.

Kravitz: And then we’re told, “She’s difficult. She’s a bitch.”

Ackie: Or empowerment and girl power: “You’re a girl boss.” “No, I’m a boss.”

Kravitz: I literally wanted to put “female-directed by” at the end of the movie because I’m like, “Why is it [always] female director?” It’s not like, “Hey, hi, female doctor.” Are you a female lawyer? No. I’m not a directress.

A lot of people will be talking about the ending. Did you always envision it concluding with Frida as new CEO of King Tech with an impaired Slater as her husband?

Kravitz: Well, I actually don’t know if we talk about that. There was a different ending. It changed. For good reason. But the ending-ending was always the same.

Ackie: There was a different twist, let’s say, before the ending.

Kravitz: But the ending of Frida taking over and the cycle continuing, but now she’s in Slater’s position, was always the end. Although there was a very, early version of the script where things went down in flames and he just died and that was the end. And Chan was just like, “Slater can’t die. It’s too easy.” There was cannibalism in an earlier version of the script. That shit was crazy. You think this is crazy?

Tatum and Kravitz on the set of Blink Twice.Carlos Somonte

How do you know when something needs to change?

Kravitz: If multiple people are telling you something, you gotta start listening. Obviously you fight for and get attached to certain things, but you really have to try and separate your ego from what the story’s telling you it wants to be. That was a big lesson for me. You have this idea in your mind of what it’s going to be, and the more you try and make it that the worse the product is.

You have to let art tell you what it wants to be and talk to you. Then also, I really made this film with an audience in mind. I love going to the theater. I love that experience, and so I’m very conscious of the audience’s experience while watching the film. I want people to have fun. I want them to lean forward, not back. I want them to leave open and having conversations and not feeling alienated or angry.

There’s a line early in the movie, “Success is the best revenge.” Frida gets her revenge, but is she successful at the end of the film?

Kravitz: That’s a very good question. How do you define success? And was it worth it? I don’t think there’s a right answer. There are versions [of the movie’s ending] where I’m very happy for Frida. I’m happy that she hopefully has a comfortable life now, and I’m also mortified at what she had to do to get there.

Ackie: There’s potentially a future where she doesn’t deal with the trauma. Or does.

Kravitz: That look you give at the end of the movie, in my mind, is the Mona Lisa of looks: Is she happy? Is she angry? Is she like, “Fuck, yeah!” Is she sad? It’s all these things at once and it’s so stoic and interesting. I don’t think there’s a right answer.

What was important to you in depicting the more distressing scenes of sexual violence?

Kravitz: Obviously that’s a foundation of the film, and it was something I had to fight for. It makes people uncomfortable, but I wanted to make people the right level of uncomfortable. There was feedback at one point: “People don’t like that scene.” I’m like, “You’re not supposed to like that scene.” But we live in a funny time right now with storytelling where people don’t like to feel uncomfortable, and think that means it’s bad. What I love about storytelling is that you go on a journey.

Ackie: And you’re safe on the other end.

Kravitz: We’re going to look at this. I know it’s uncomfortable. The point isn’t to traumatize you. You just need to look, and let it sit there for a second. But they don’t want to look. People want [the terrifying thing] to be aliens or a monster in the woods before they want it to be what it really is. I’m like, “No, it’s us. It’s people.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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