It’s hard to believe that the Naomi Scott I’ve just met on Zoom—calm and clever and charmingly rambly from her home in Los Angeles—is the same person conducting a master class in hysteria in Smile 2, currently the number one film in United States. She’s been hearing stuff like that a lot lately. But the British actor and musician, until this point best known for the divisive big-screen remakes of Aladdin and Charlie’s Angels, came into the buzzy horror sequel ready to give it her all.
From the moment the script from writer-director Parker Finn came her way, Scott felt an intrinsic connection to the role of Skye Riley, a pop star whose struggles with addiction and fame coincide with the spread of the Smile Entity’s deadly curse. And from the moment she began filming, she proved just how far she was willing to go.
The film, of course, demanded that she go very far. Scott screams and cries and dances and sings and, yes, smiles her way through Smile 2’s twisty nightmare with a relentless commitment. Even for longtime fans of her work—Scott came up on the Disney Channel series Life Bites, and more recently shined in a pivotal role in Netflix’s Anatomy of a Scandal—it’d be hard to know she had this kind of visceral performance in her. Over our conversation, Scott freely admits to feeling like a “phony” in the industry, seeking out this kind of intensely challenging work to little avail, until now.
It’s partly why, as exhausting as making the movie was for Scott, you won’t hear her say a negative thing about the experience. “I got to go there, man,” she says. “What else am I doing this for if not that?” Based on the response to the film and her work so far, this won’t be the last time.
Vanity Fair: This is a major, demanding role for you. Did you feel nervous about how the film would perform and be received?
Naomi Scott: The honest answer is no. I did not have any nervousness about it being out in the world. I was just excited. There was a moment when Parker brought me into the edit. He’s an excited creative force, and I think that’s why we both work so well together; he was like, “Come in and watch some scenes.” This was a couple months after we wrapped, and so I did. I only saw a couple scenes and I just was like, “I love this, and that I know I’m going to love this.” Realizing what a blessing that is in a creative endeavor that you’ve put so much of yourself into, that the parts of that that are out of my control actually have resulted in something that I personally am enjoying to the nth degree—it’s such a gift. So there was no nervousness. Even when I saw the cut that Parker showed me, I just loved the movie, man. I was like, “This is so unhinged. It’s so funny.” [Laughs] Parker did that, the crew did that, I did that, period. That lives forever. And when my kids are old enough, I’ll be like, “Look what your mom did.” How cool is that?