Zoë Kravitz: ​‘Direct­ing is what I’ve always want­ed to do’

Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice began life as a ​“fever dream novel­la” that she worked on through­out the years with co-writer E.T. Feigen­baum, who would then become her showrun­ner on the crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed series High Fideli­ty. After that series came to an abrupt end, they re-upped their efforts to bring her direc­to­r­i­al debut to the screen with Kravitz assem­bling a star­ry ensem­ble led by Nao­mi Ack­ie and Chan­ning Tatum. Ack­ie plays Fri­da, a nail artist and wait­ress who, along with friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the acquain­tance of noto­ri­ous tech bil­lion­aire Slater King (Tatum). They accept an invi­ta­tion to his pri­vate island along­side a fun-lov­ing crew of mis­fits only to dis­cov­er that there is a rot in the lux­u­ri­ous hacienda’s foun­da­tion. Kravitz’s satir­i­cal thriller dis­tin­guish­es her as just as com­pelling a tal­ent behind that cam­era as she is in front of it. She spoke to LWLies about how being inspired by col­lab­o­ra­tors and how the cru­el­ty of the world around her led to one of the year’s most beau­ti­ful nightmares.

LWLies: This is the end of a real­ly long road for you, right? What were the ele­ments that remained through­out the process of mak­ing Blink Twice?

Kravitz: Sum­mer 2017 is when I start­ed to write this film. The themes of pow­er stayed the same, but the char­ac­ters were dif­fer­ent. The orig­i­nal ver­sion of Fri­da was much clos­er to my per­spec­tive. It was more Jess who want­ed to go and to meet Slater King and Fri­da was kind of pulled along on this ride. Then the more we wrote the more we realised it was a much more inter­est­ing arc for Fri­da if she was the one that was so enam­oured with the world. If she was the dri­ving force of the sto­ry. I was also inter­est­ed in play­ing with the metaphor of the Gar­den of Eden but we weren’t real­ly sure how to make it work. A lot came once Eric and I start­ed writ­ing togeth­er and post 2017 a lot of infor­ma­tion was com­ing out into the world that shift­ed the dia­logue a lit­tle bit too. We had to change a lot of the behav­iour of cer­tain char­ac­ters to be a lot more out­ward. Once Me Too and Time’s Up became a real con­ver­sa­tion we had to change ele­ments of the envi­ron­ment these char­ac­ters were liv­ing in.

It is such an inter­est­ing par­al­lel to what’s hap­pened where there was an aware­ness of these abu­sive fig­ures, but you were oper­at­ing inside an indus­try where peo­ple were silent.

Yep. And so that con­cept, because it wasn’t being talked about at the time, is where this came from. Me try­ing to find a way to express what it feels like to be asked as a woman to for­get and pre­tend to feel safe. I’m try­ing to find a way to real­ly express how absurd it is.

In the years that passed did any of the direc­tors you worked with change your approach to it?

Not my approach. I have always want­ed to direct, and I’ve been incred­i­bly lucky to work with very tal­ent­ed direc­tors. I think I learned from them and I’m inspired by them, specif­i­cal­ly work­ing with peo­ple like Matt Reeves and Steven Soder­bergh so close to shoot­ing too. Matt is just so metic­u­lous and I’m like that and it was real­ly com­fort­ing to me to meet some­one else who cares about the details. Often artists and specif­i­cal­ly women can be made to feel dif­fi­cult for car­ing about the small things.

Did you have any kind of push­back in terms of being asked to lose details you cared about or to soft­en it in some ways?

A lit­tle bit. Some things end­ed up chang­ing like the orig­i­nal title, Pussy Island, which I think ulti­mate­ly was the right choice.

I pre­fer Blink Twice to be honest.

I do too. Things like that often lead you to the right thing, but def­i­nite­ly, there were some of the more intense scenes I would get notes about. And we’re liv­ing in a real­ly inter­est­ing time right now where peo­ple might not like some­thing or feel uncom­fort­able when the truth is you’re not sup­posed to like every moment of this sto­ry. That’s the emo­tion­al roller­coast­er you’re going on.

I guess a big ques­tion is where you draw the line. Ker­ry James Marshall’s art does not have any trau­ma against black bod­ies hap­pen­ing in it. Chi­nonye Chuk­wu with Till would only show the after­math of vio­lence. Yet Bar­ry Jenk­ins choos­es to show lynch­ings. What bound­aries do you have?

For me it’s a bal­ance. I think it’s impor­tant to be effec­tive but I don’t want to trau­ma­tise my audi­ence or my actors and specif­i­cal­ly with some of the more vio­lent or dif­fi­cult scenes, I want­ed to make some­thing that made peo­ple lean for­ward instead of lean back. And so, we found a real­ly great bal­ance where peo­ple under­stand the grav­i­ty of what we’re try­ing to say and still be enter­tained and still being on the character’s side and root­ing for them when things get bloody. But in the film in gen­er­al, there’s a lay­er of mag­i­cal real­ism. So we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the real world, which is help­ful, but there’s also no nudi­ty. The most graph­ic scene is also actu­al­ly just sit­ting in a moment, which is also one of the longer shots. All the scenes are very short but at that point, I want­ed to sit in that moment and let it be long on pur­pose, so that was what was more impor­tant to me was actu­al­ly the length of the shot.

The par­tic­u­lar place is fas­ci­nat­ing. It is beau­ti­ful, but in my notes, I kept writ­ing down ​‘Over­look Hotel’ because it also has that ele­ment of the uncanny.

That was my ref­er­ence and that was why I chose that place. We looked at a bunch of dif­fer­ent hacien­das. When you think of a billionaire’s island peo­ple think of it as very mod­ern and very crisp. And so I want­ed to sur­prise the audi­ence with what they see. I want­ed it to be cosy, a place that we all want­ed to be and feel com­fort­able in but that you imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize with one image. And this place is so spe­cif­ic look­ing that like the Over­look Hotel it almost is a char­ac­ter on its own.

It’s gor­geous but the way that you’ve shot it you can’t ful­ly get your bear­ings, which is so Kubrick.

That wasn’t ful­ly inten­tion­al at first. Obvi­ous­ly, we took lots of lib­er­ties, but there were still cer­tain things dur­ing edit­ing that I had trou­ble with. I knew what direc­tion things were and I realised I had to real­ly let go of that in order to be tru­ly free and I end­ed up reorder­ing a lot. The incred­i­ble gift of every­one wear­ing the same thing every day is that you can move any­thing any­where in post. But it’s so fun­ny to make it so the pool doesn’t make sense. At one point this is to the left and in anoth­er scene it is to the right. I realised how much scari­er it was to real­ly mess with the audience’s mind in that way and have it be this trap you can’t get out of.

Nao­mi is absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal in this. She told me she didn’t tech­ni­cal­ly audi­tion. She just start­ed talk­ing to you about the scenes and then pre­sumed that she had the role.

Which she did! When I spoke to her the first time she just got it. She under­stood the world and the tone and the char­ac­ters so clear­ly even though it was a jug­gling act for her. In one moment she’s manip­u­la­tive then inno­cent then ter­ri­fied then she’s doing com­e­dy. It’s a dif­fi­cult role, but Nao­mi Ack­ie needs very lit­tle direc­tion. I would give her one note and I would just see her brain go. That was it. She also has, I think, one of the most incred­i­ble faces I’ve ever seen, which is why there are so many close-ups of her in the movie. She’s so intel­li­gent and her tal­ent just oozes out of her and, as a first-time direc­tor, she made my job much easier.

The unkind cliché about actors turned writer/​directors is that they’ll write the sort of role they want to do, so even if they aren’t in it, there is still a ver­sion of them. But I didn’t get a sense of that at all – this felt very much for Naomi.

I’m glad that you feel that way as that was impor­tant to me. Orig­i­nal­ly Fri­da was much clos­er to me and the more I wrote and when I decid­ed I want­ed to direct it freed me of think­ing about myself and I was real­ly able to write a deli­cious char­ac­ter for some­body else. It is impor­tant to me as a film­mak­er to write roles for women and specif­i­cal­ly women of colour that I don’t see a lot and there’s some­thing very impor­tant about the rela­tion­ship between a direc­tor and an actor, because I think I’m able to see cer­tain things about Nao­mi that she can’t see about her­self and cel­e­brate them.

What’s the key to also cast­ing the entire ensemble?

When I was writ­ing, at one point I went on a vaca­tion with a group of friends and we were hav­ing a great time. And I realised that was the key to the movie. What if in this moment I realised that this trip I was hav­ing with my friends wasn’t what I thought it was and the rug was pulled from under me? With the actors, the kinds of peo­ple who were attract­ed to the roles under­stood what I was try­ing to do and that helped weed out who was meant to be a part of the project and who wasn’t.

It must be very edi­fy­ing that Geena Davis came on board?

Espe­cial­ly Geena! With the film and what it’s about she’s been a pio­neer in this indus­try. So the fact that she want­ed to do it was incred­i­bly val­i­dat­ing. That what we were try­ing to say was com­ing across and had pur­pose and meaning.

It’s your editor’s Kathryn J Schubert’s first fea­ture as well. Why not just go with the most expe­ri­enced peo­ple to lean on when you are mak­ing your debut?

I real­ly tried to lis­ten to what they’d bring. I knew I want­ed a female edi­tor but then Kathryn and I had our con­ver­sa­tion and I was try­ing to explain what I was see­ing in my mind, and how I want­ed to start slow and then accel­er­ate and get faster and faster, and talk­ing about sen­so­ry mem­o­ry and how we process and remem­ber things and real­ly want­i­ng to tune into that. Cre­ative­ly, when you click with some­one that way, it’s very spe­cial. And it’s not about whether they’ve made a mil­lion movies, it’s that we are speak­ing the same lan­guage, and that’s what I’m look­ing for.

What do you think is the key to cre­at­ing the tone and the dread that per­me­ates so much of the film?

The Shin­ing is a big ref­er­ence for me obvi­ous­ly. That feel­ing of dread in The Shin­ing specif­i­cal­ly where you actu­al­ly know what’s going to hap­pen. We don’t tell you but you know you’re watch­ing a thriller and from the first frame, the sound design and the lizard tell the audi­ence some­thing is wrong. But it’s also about enough lit­tle crumbs of some­thing being off, but wait­ing long enough to reveal what when the audi­ence almost goes past the thresh­old. The audi­ence starts to feel uncom­fort­able because you’re wait­ing for the oth­er shoe to drop, you know that this is all going too well. And in terms of movie struc­ture, a lot of peo­ple might tell you not to do that but I’m trust­ing the audi­ence will be patient. And in the edit­ing process too, that was def­i­nite­ly some­thing we had to find and ask how long can we real­ly string this out before it becomes bor­ing? I think that we found the right amount of time and the right amount of ten­sion so that it nev­er becomes flat. There’s elec­tric­i­ty through­out the first two acts of the film, but it’s all about patience. It’s about mak­ing peo­ple work for it.

Com­ing up we’ve got act­ing projects announced for you, but do you intend to direct again soon?

This is what I’ve always want­ed to do. And I love act­ing, I’ll always act and serve great direc­tors and great sto­ries. I love film and I want to par­tic­i­pate and con­tribute to the film com­mu­ni­ty as much as I can but writ­ing and direct­ing is what I hope to most­ly do eventually.