Zoe Kravitz had never met Channing Tatum when she was looking to cast the villain in Blink Twice, the new psychological thriller she co-writes and directs.
But she sensed a fearlessness in the roles she had seen him play that intrigued her when she first sent him the script, co-written by E.T. Feigenbaum. She had seen Tatum play the hero plenty of times, but never the bad guy.
“I think that was why I wanted him to do it,” Kravitz, 35, says in a video call from Los Angeles. “I’ve always thought he’s such a great actor and I’ve always felt that there was more beneath the surface and it would be fun to watch him do something different.”
In the film, which opens in theatres this Friday, Tatum, Kravitz’s now-fiance, plays Slater King, a tech billionaire with a dark past. When we first meet him, he’s apologizing for “everything that happened.”
What that is, we never learn. But shortly after the film starts, King meets Frida (played by the excellent Naomi Ackie), a waitress and aspiring nail designer, and invites her and a friend (Alia Shawkat) to party with him and his pals on his private island.
No cellphones are allowed on his slice of paradise, but after her friend goes missing it’s not long before Frida realizes that her dream vacation is turning into a fight for her own survival.
“I knew that the character of Slater King needed to be charismatic and charming,” Kravitz says with a laugh. “He’s someone that you would feel safe enough to go away on a vacation with.”
The dark drama — which Kravtiz originally wrote under the title Pussy Island — is the actress’ directorial debut, and it stretches back to 2017 as she traced her emotional responses to the #MeToo movement and the inequality between men and women.
“The story started more as emotion and needing to find a place to put a lot of different emotions and wanting to really explore power and human nature and the female experience of having to pretend and forget and smile through fear and trauma,” Kravitz says.
As the daughter of rocker Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet, Kravitz has made a name for herself acting in the Divergent series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Mad Max: Fury Road, Big Little Lies, and a gender-swapped version of the 2000 John Cusack classic High Fidelity.
Her path to a role behind the camera came about because she always envisioned herself in the director’s chair.
“Once I was done with the script, I felt like it was so specific to me and I saw the world and the characters in my mind so clearly that I just didn’t know if I felt comfortable giving it to someone else to bring to life,” she says.
After appearing as Catwoman opposite Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight in 2022’s The Batman, Kravitz could have parked Blink Twice to capitalize on her surging popularity. But she couldn’t shake the need to tell her own story.
And there was, of course, her desire to make something twisted with Tatum as her leading man. If people are falling in love with him as Gambit in his scene-stealing cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, this is going to be a role unlike any other he had played before.
“I loved him in Foxcatcher and 21 Jump Street. So I’m a fan of his work,” she says. “But I think there was something about Magic Mike that I thought was feminist. It’s a movie about men made for women. I just felt he would be somebody who’d be interested in telling this story and not afraid to tell this story.”
She landed on Ackie, who played Whitney Houston in the 2022 biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody and stars opposite Pattinson in next year’s sci-fi thriller Mickey 17, because of the British actress’ range.
“The character of Frida is so complex and the part requires somebody who can go from comedy to drama to action to fierceness and sometimes all of those emotions are happening at one time,” she says.
Kravitz also revisited some of her favourite movies for renewed inspiration. “My DP, Adam Newport Berra, and I spent a lot of time watching movies and breaking down what we loved about them,” she says. “For a long time, I would watch movies and think, ‘I like that.’ But I never would take the time to understand why I liked it and what I loved about them. So that was a fun process. I was really inspired by Kubrick’s films, The Shining in particular.”
Breaking into a grin, Kravitz goes on to namecheck Pulp Fiction, Boogie Nights, Phantom Thread and Robert Altman’s cult fave 3 Women as other influences.
“The list goes on and on,” she smiles. “I’m really into film.”
Blink Twice opens in theatres on Aug. 23.