To celebrate the release of SMILE 2, Naomi Scott sat down with us to talk about what drew her to the movie & her character, Skye Riley’s inspirations as well as the launch of her production company, New Name Entertainment. Read the full interview below.
Tom [THH] Hello. How are you feeling ahead of the premiere today?
Naomi: Honestly, I’m feeling so great and it’s really nice being home talking to fellow Brits.
Parker: Doing well, very, very excited!
Tom [THH]: Parker, in a lot of ways like David F. Sandberg and you got your start in big productions through short films like Laura Hasn’t Slept, the foundation for Smile. I was wondering if you could talk through that experience?
Parker: It was very surreal to go through that. I had been making a bunch of shorts and I’d been writing scripts. It felt like I was shouting into the void and just hoping somebody would turn and look my way. Never anticipating, everything that would happen with Smile. I felt incredibly grateful just to get to make that film. Honestly, it’s just about persistence and, you know, keep on making more and more projects
Tom [THH]: The first Smile is considered by so many people as one of the scariest and uneasiest films of the past decade. Going into the sequel, how did you approach topping that and delivering on a lot of higher expectations that people have now for this movie after seeing the first?
Parker: I knew that if I was going to approach a sequel, I didn’t want to just do a simple continuation or retread of the original. If I was going to ask audiences to give me their time again, that I was going to try to deliver something that was unexpected and fresh. The film has Smile running through its DNA, but it also has its own identity and I thought that was a really interesting approach.
Tom [THH] I’ll jump in & get started, obviously, throughout your career Naomi, you’ve never been afraid of using your voice both in terms of producing your own music and then starring in musicals and such. Is that something that draws you in, to something like Smile [& other projects], which is a horror and not typically in your wheelhouse so far?
Naomi: I had seen the short film that Parker did, Laura Hasn’t Slept in 2020. And I just thought this is so cool & what a great concept. How has this not already been a thing? And so then cut to a couple of years later, I go and watch the feature movie in the cinema and I was just blown away by Parker’s filmmaking and the performance of Sosie Bacon. And I thought, wow, what a combination of things. This is clearly a filmmaker who cares about character. So when I heard that he was doing another movie, we met and we were supposed to have a 30 minute conversation & instead it was two and a half hours. He’s brilliant and also just a great guy, but also he just lives and breathes this. He’s so enthusiastic in the best way & intense in the best way, he gets the best performance out of you, & he trusts you. He’s such a collaborator. So I was just a fan of him. And I think when he then started talking to me about, he was talking to me about this character of Skye Riley, I had no idea that she was a musician or anything yet. And so I was going, wow, this sounds interesting. And then when I read the script, I felt like he really delivered on the promise of who this character was. So to answer your question, it really was the filmmaker and the character, & it felt like the icing on the cake that it lent into some of my strengths.
Tom [THH]: Parker, while watching Smile 2, I was genuinely so inspired by a lot of the technicality of it, especially your eye for direction and a lot of the camera angles and movements that you do. Were there any horror films or horror movie directors growing up that maybe inspired your eye for horror?
Parker: As a filmmaker, I wear my influences on my sleeves. Kubrick is my favorite director of all time, The Shining is one of my favorite films of all time, and his craft is so inspiring to me. I also look at, he’s not really a horror film director, but Todd Haynes, who is another craftsman that I’m quite obsessed with. Safe is one of my favorite films of all time. And then for some of the atmospheric stuff, I look to Japanese filmmakers like Kiyoshi Kurosawa. I love the film, Cure. That movie scared the shit out of me! I love that kind of stuff. And then I also try to look outside of the horror genre as well at Kraft and try to do things that aren’t necessarily what we expect from horror. I’d prefer not to be in a dark basement or a spidery attic. I wanna be in places that don’t scream horror, but it’s the context of it that makes it really frightening and allows it to get under your skin in an unexpected way.
Tom [THH]: Skye Riley is a global sensational pop singer in the film. And if you could embody her for just a minute Naomi, who do you think would be like her top three singers that have inspired her the most?
Naomi: Inspired Skye? That’s a good question! I think we’ve got to go with Gaga. She’s just an incredible performer. & that’s not to say that my character in the movie is anywhere close to some of her icons, I’m just saying there’s probably inspiration. Listen I think she’d be a brat girl for sure. You know, absolutely should be a brat girl. & I think also, oh I’m gonna go with Rihanna in the early 2000s. Specifically. I think that would be her shit. Oh, that’s great.
Tom [THH]: You took a little bit of a break from acting from 2020, obviously, to Smile in terms of appearing in films. And in that time you started up a Production Company! New Name Entertainment. I was wondering what type of projects are you looking to produce and approach under New Name?
Naomi: Honestly, I think we’re just really blessed to be in a position where we can follow our curiosity. It wasn’t just like, oh, we wanna create a production company just for me to be in things. It was like, no, what are we interested in? What’s our taste? And honestly, the name, New Name is really like, we’re new names. We want to always feel like we have have learner plates on, like we’re always a new name in this thing. And we also want to find new names, new writers, filmmakers, & young people who are just new stories, new things. That’s the stuff that really excites us & that can manifest in anything. And it’s completely genre agnostic. We’re just super excited to even get the opportunity to potentially see something through from an idea to actually seeing it get made It’s just the coolest thing ever.
Tom [THH]: Parker, In the horror space, there’s a big talk online, a debate at times about practical effects & visual effects. Do you firmly stand with one or the other or are you more whatever is best for the film that you’re making?
Parker: I think you’re always trying to figure out the right approach. I love practical effects & I grew up on practical effects. It was one of the reasons I wanted to make horror films. And I always try to put as much in front of the camera as possible. I love a practical foundation, whether it’s the violence, score effects, creature effects, things like that, fire too, any of that. I want it to be real. But I also think that VFX and CG can be a great tool, but if I’m going to use them like a hybrid nature, I always want to start as practical as possible, take that to its limit and then sweeten it with VFX.
Tom [THH] Thank you so much. That was great.
Parker: Absolutely. Thank you!
Naomi: That was such great questions, Thomas.
Tom [THH]: This is my first junket interview & you made it a pleasure-
Naomi: What?! Thomas, you’re amazing, mate. Come on, give us a hug. Thank you. You killed it!
Smile 2 is NOW playing in theaters.
