LOS ANGELES: Actress Zoe Kravitz, who is making her directorial debut with the psychological thriller “Blink Twice”, has talked about why she roped in Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie for the film.
Kravitz said she was looking for someone who was charming and who would make the audience feel safe.
"Who else is that but Channing Tatum?" she said.
Kravitz added: "The whole world would be like, yes, I would go on vacation with you and feel totally safe. There's nothing creepy about him."
She also had a feeling that Tatum himself was a feminist courtesy his work in the “Magic Mike” movies
Finding the perfect actor for the character of Frida was a "whole other journey" for Kravitz.
"It's a hard part, " Kravitz said.
The actress-filmmaker said: "She's many things at once. You kind of never really get a real handle on who she is. How manipulative is she? How unaware? Is she the villain? Is she the victim? There's so many different elements to that character."
Ackie remembers that what was supposed to be an initial chat with Kravitz turned into a two hour conversation around the ideas of the film.
"There was a lot that conversation brought up for me around the idea of the pursuit of power, about sexual assault, but also about Frida's want for something more, " Ackie said.
The actress explained: “Her relationship with the symbol of power that is Slater, how that affects her and that gives her blind spots to certain things. There's many different things going on at the same time about how people are interacting with each other when it comes to these ideas of status and money, and they're all abusing it in one way or another.”
The two talked about Frida as quite an “interesting, imperfect character, and how that made her a really an interesting victim”.
The film is distributed internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures and will be in cinemas on August 23 in India.