Naomi Scott (Charlie’s Angels, Power Rangers) stars as global pop sensation Skye Riley embarking on a world tour in Parker Finn’s Smile 2, marking the actor’s first foray into horror. While Skye Riley makes for an extremely complex character for any actor to tackle, Scott handles it with seeming ease while also bringing her singing/songwriting talents to the role.
Parker Finn studied pop artists like FKA Twigs, Sia, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Olivia Rodrigo, and Tate McRae (who has a songwriting credit on Smile 2 for “Grieved You”) to capture Skye Riley’s journey and immense tour pressures with authenticity. The filmmaker and his team collaborated with the songwriting duo Take A Daytrip (Denzel Michael-Akil Baptiste and David Charles Marshall Biral) and songwriter Alexis Idarose Kesselman to develop five original songs for Skye’s album “Too Much for One Heart” – “Grieved You,” “New Brain,” “Death of Me,” “Just My Name,“ and “Blood on White Satin.”
Also sharing co-writing credit on some of those songs is the actor behind Skye Riley herself, Naomi Scott. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Scott ahead of the film’s release, who broke down what it was like to pen songs for her character. Scott explains, “One of the songs that we co-wrote together, we co-wrote over Zoom, and it started two days after I was cast. Two days later, I was in the studio, and I was recording; I was cutting vocals for ‘New Brain,’ I believe, or ‘Blood On White Satin,’ I can’t remember. Alexis Idarose, the writer-producer for four of the songs on the EP, we were Zooming; she was in New York, and I was in London. We started co-writing this song, ‘Just My Name,’ together, and she was on a piano in New York, and I was on a piano.
“So that was interesting because there was almost this element of, I hadn’t fully discovered Skye yet, but actually, that’s just part of the process, and it informed it in an interesting way. Then, after we shot the movie, Alexis and I wrote ‘Death Of Me’ together, which is the end credit song. That was so fun because, by that point, I’d done all the hard work, and it was just like, let’s write Skye’s pop anthem. Let’s have so much fun with it. We did, and it was just the best because we’d really solidified her sound by that point.”
That Idarose had already formed some of the tracks gave Scott a working blueprint when it came to finding Skye’s musical sound. Scott says of Skye’s music, “That was very much Idarose and the other producer/writers in terms of, when I signed onto the project, there were already three songs written and, two in particular, which was the ones that she wrote and produced, ‘Blood On White Satin,’ ‘New Brain,’ and then ‘Grieved You‘ was a producing duo called Take a Daytrip. But in those two songs, her voice was on the demo. She was my blueprint. In terms of what Skye sounded like and the way in which she sang, I used Alexis as my blueprint, and together we figured out how she sounded, and also just leaning into that. And with the accent and the way I sing, it’s very different to how I usually sing, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted it to be Skye and not me.“
Yet, Scott’s musical contributions to Smile 2 only begin to hint toward just how daunting a role Skye Riley is. Skye is a pop star coping with recent trauma on top of deep-seated insecurities and emotional baggage, exacerbated by the immense pressures of launching an expensive global tour. That’s before she’s afflicted by the supernatural curse that seeks to break her down psychologically. Scott’s performance becomes even more impressive, considering that it’s her first horror role, and Finn puts her through the wringer here.
“I think, just having to trust that I was going to be able to get where I needed to go,“ Scott says of the most intimidating aspect of bringing Skye to life. “I think that any actor or performer, we probably all feel like that, where we’re like, ‘Oh, am I going to get there? Am I going to get there?‘ When it came to the most extreme moments, maybe. I think the rest of it, in terms of Skye just being Skye, that was just so enjoyable to do.“
Skye endures quite a lot of extreme moments in Smile 2, but Scott relished exploring some of her character’s quieter moments of duress. She recalls, “One of my favorite scenes to shoot was when she’s on the phone with Gemma (Dylan Gelula), and the vulnerability in that scene, I really enjoyed that. Some of the quieter scenes were fun, but I really leaned on Parker in some of the more extreme moments to help me meter where I was at and where Skye was at in the movie.“
Smile 2 opens wide in theaters on October 18, 2024.
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