The cast of Smile 2 celebrated the horrifying new movie that follows the next adventure of the now iconic Smiling Demon.
This second movie in the series takes the story in an entirely new and unexpected direction and finds new ways to scare audiences (just like director Parker Finn previously promised).
Smile 2 follows the world of Naomi Scott’s Skye Riley, an incredibly popular pop superstar who gets saddled with the demon after watching an unfortunate soul succumb to the evil entity.
The Cast of Smile 2 Talk About the Terrifying New Horror Sequel
The Direct was able to attend the red carpet premiere of Smile 2 and speak to the cast and director of Paramount Pictures’ upcoming horror sequel.
Lead star Naomi Scott, who plays superstar Skye Riley, spoke about if there were any particular pop stars that she based he performance on:
“There really wasn’t a particular person that I was pulling from. Maybe, I think, number one, because I maybe didn’t want it to be too derivative of a person. But also, I think it was just trusting the fact that I’ve consumed these wonderful performers throughout the years, and subconsciously, it will come out. I’m sure people can draw comparisons… And through the costume and the choreography, each of those artists, our costume designer, and our choreographer, I’m sure they’ve also taken inspiration. But I wanted to just trust the fact that it would come out…”
Director Parker Finn admitted how “it’s still very surreal even to hear people use the word franchise:”
“It’s still very surreal to even hear people use the word franchise… This was just something I wrote in my bedroom, you know, and then this has happened. But I think that if I was even gonna approach a sequel, I wanted to make sure that in asking an audience to give me their time again, I was gonna deliver something really worthwhile and unexpected and fresh and exciting. And I think if I had my way, that’ll become sort of the hallmark of what ‘Smile’ is, is unexpected stories that are really character driven and freaky, that never stops being scary.”
As for what was the most unique part of his time on Smile 2, the director noted how crazy it was to put on a live pop show for the movie’s leading superstar:
“So many on this one, for sure. What comes to mind immediately was the opportunity to get to put on, essentially, a live pop show. That was a huge learning curve that took an enormous amount of prep. We wanted to make sure that we built real credibility into this pop star and that people watching this would be like, Wait, is she real? I don’t understand. This is so effective and feels so honest and true. And so that world of a pop star, and bringing that to life, was a really unique experience.”
Some audiences interpreted the bleak ending of the first film, where the main character loses to the Smiling Demon and dies, as a message indicating that anyone with mental health issues will eventually succumb to them.
“I never tried to put a message in any of my films,” the director admitted:
“I never tried to put a message in any of my films. I’m more interested in exploring some theme or something that’s on my mind. And so in the first film, I mean, that is… Rose is a character we’re following, and she has her own unique life circumstances and situations. I think the film is a blend of something psychological; there’s a metaphor going on, but there’s also something supernatural.”
The filmmaker went on to explain how those he’d not too interested in endings “designed to pat an audience on the head:”
“It’s also a Rated-R horror movie that’s designed to terrify adults. And so I feel that endings that are tied up with a pretty bow, that are clean or designed just to pat an audience on the head and say, everything will be okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not for me. I’m more interested in a real exploration of something that, you know, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, a real human experience. That’s what I was chasing with that first film.”
In Smile 2, Skye Riley’s best friend is Gemma, played by Dylan Gelula.
For Gelulua she joked that the movies work so well because it’s really scary when “someone bears their teeth at you like a monkey:”
“I think it’s really scary, and I think it taps into something very deeply scary, which is when someone bears their teeth at you like a monkey. It’s scary when someone’s smiling at you, and you don’t know them, or sometimes when you do.”
The actress then went on to explain how interesting it was to play “the close confidant of someone who is super famous:”
“It’s an interesting character to play, the close confidant of someone who is super famous. That is a real person a lot of these celebrities have, like a friend from childhood that they keep in their entourage. And that’s a very interesting dynamic between two people that I haven’t gotten to play yet. So that was fun.”
Paul Jacobson, the actor behind Morris, a strange ally to Scott’s Skye Riley in the movie, praised the director’s vision for really helping these Smile movies connect with audiences as much as they do, noting how the “real people” and “real relationships” within “insane and terrifying” situations really helps it all land perfectly:
“The director writes very real people, real relationships, [and] real characters within situations that are just insane and terrifying. Obviously, this is out of this world, and even the schism between what’s real and what’s not is intense throughout the whole film. So you’re not in a real place, and yet the people and the relationships are very human, and the terror is portrayed by Naomi unbelievably. So we connect to humanity, we connect to real circumstances, we connect to people who are honest and real, and relationships that make sense to us. So, the terror is huge because of that.”
Ray Nicholson, who plays Paul Hudson, exclaimed how unique the scale of the whole project was for him while also noting that he knew it was going to work very early on:
“I think its scale was so incredible. When I read the script, I was like, I wonder how they’re gonna pull this off. And then, one of the first days I went, we were in this stadium, full of lights, full setup, full of everything. And I was like, Oh, this is gonna work.”
Miles Gutierrez-Riley plays Joshua, Skye’s personal assistant. The actor admitted how he “[hasn’t] really shot a lot of horror” up until this point:
“I haven’t really shot a lot of horror, like pure horror… The premise is so personal and really touching at the end of the day. So working on something that was both so grand, spectacular, and horrifically scary, but [has a] really personal touch was impactful to me.”
Alexis Idarose Kesselman, the brilliant mind behind Skye Riley’s pop music in the movie, talked about what her North Star was when writing that music:
“The main thing is, when I work with an artist, what makes them unique, what makes them different, and get to finding their inner voice. And I think we had so many inspirations, but I knew that Skye had to be different, and we tried to find that. And I think once we had ‘Blood on White Satin’ (one of Skye Riley’s main tracks), that was kind of the North Star.”
The full red carpet interviews can be seen below:
Smile 2 hits theaters on Friday, October 18.
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