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Inde Navarrette is obsessed with a lot right now. The first thing is her nails, butter yellow tips dotted with silver gems to replicate eyebrow piercings, that she playfully flashes on a Zoom call from her high-rise apartment in New York. Then there’s Fourth Wing, the fantasy series from author Rebecca Yarros, which she recently finished reading. And finally, a perhaps surprising but fun activity: playing pool with her friends.
As we talk, it quickly becomes apparent that she is also healthily obsessed with her work as an actor. The twenty-five-year-old, who is best known for her role as Sarah Cushing in CW’s Superman and Lois, enacts a certain selectivity when it comes to choosing what projects to star in. “I’m very sensitive,” she admits, before recounting that she had to go salsa dancing after watching Rose Byrne’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You to get the feelings that it brought up out of her body. “I tend to take everything from films. I’ll watch something scary, get home, and think that they’re in my closet.”
But these sensitivities have done little to limit Navarrette. Now, she’s gaining traction for her stand-out performance in Obsession, the burgeoning indie horror from YouTuber Curry Barker. “I knew that if I was going to take on a project like this, I had to have a reason,” she says with an abject sense of determination when asked about what drew her to this particular project. The reason? Her commitment to dipping her toe into everything humanly possible.
In our conversation, we talk about everything from finding inspiration in Mia Goth, to her love of Percy Jackson. What stays abundantly clear throughout is both the passion that Navarrette harbours for her work, and the precision that goes into what she does and plans to do next. There is somewhat of a delicious irony in the fact that a non-traditional horror fan would find what is sure to be a break-out success in a film like Obsession. But this just stands to Navarrette’s speciality as a performer: her willingness to scream at the top of her lungs without shame, and an absolute fearless desire to try anything.
Q: First of all, congratulations. You are so good in this film. What drew you to this project? Was it the script or the concept?
Inde: Thank you! When I got this script, it was the first time I’ve ever thought, “I know exactly what this character is feeling. I know exactly how to portray this.” I just fundamentally understood Nikki, and that became my reason. But also, after doing TV shows for such a long time and branching into film, I really wanted to do a movie where all of my range was in one film. With this role in particular, I knew that I could be the girl next door and also scream at the top of my lungs. I said to myself, “I will do whatever it takes to get this opportunity,” and if not, I’ll still go and see it. because it’s such an amazing and original concept.
“But I wished for it, it came true, and I got Obsession.”
Q: Obsession was written and directed by Curry Barker, an emerging director originally known for his shorts and sketches on YouTube. What was it like working with him? Were you aware of his past projects when you joined?
When I got the first email about the project, it mentioned who he was, and I did a little Google search, because I wanted to see what kind of creative he was, especially with the nature of this script. I watched a lot of his shorts and Milk and Serial, his first feature film which I thought was very organic, very naturalistic. The horror aspects were unlike anything I had ever seen before. So that really enticed me into his work and confirmed why I wanted to work with him before we had even met.
On set, he was very particular. He’s a writer-director, he wrote the script and he knew exactly what he wanted. But it was so beautiful because he would get exactly what he wanted from us, and then he’d let us play and we’d find little golden nuggets elsewhere. Some of that play is actually in the film.
Q: I saw Curry say in a recent interview that if the person playing Nikki didn’t work, the entire movie wouldn’t work. He needed someone good at the natural stuff, and the scary stuff, and he obviously thought that was you. What was that audition process like?
It was very similar to other audition processes in the beginning. You send a self-tape and if they like it, they’ll respond. It took a few months to hear back. But eventually I had my callback, and I thought it was the worst audition I’ve ever done. I thought, “that was bad.” But they responded to it, and then we had a chemistry read where we tried out different Bears and other Bears tried out different Nikki’s. When I read with Michael Johnston, who plays Bear in the film, there was something really beautiful about our chemistry from the start. We didn’t act like lovers, which worked so well for Nikki and Bear because they’re not supposed to be lovers. Their relationship is supposed to feel strange. We wanted to embody that uneasiness of the film, and have the audience thinking, “Something is off here. I can’t tell what it is, but something is definitely off.” It was great.
Q: What was it like constructing Nikki and Bear’s relationship with Michael on-screen?
Working with Michael was such a beautiful experience. As Nikki and Bear, we both had to go to emotional levels that sometimes felt unsafe. We had to feel things and go to places that are absolutely insane to do with somebody that you just met six weeks prior. But doing that with Michael felt so incredibly safe, which is why we could reach the levels that we do in this film.
We’d constantly check in with each other on set, and we’d try different things. Sometimes I wouldn’t know what he was going to do next, and sometimes he wouldn’t know what I was going to do next. But there was always that sense of security and fun. We knew it was all play. I knew he had my back, and he knew that I had his. We really had to go to war with each other, but it was the best, and I think that dynamic is why Obsession is the way that it is.
Q: What is it like to act in a horror film? Is it not as scary because you know it’s not real, or did you take anything happening on set home with you?
I think it’s a little bit of both. We weren’t expecting this film to have the reaction that it has. We made it as a low-budget, indie film, and we had this intimacy of arriving to set with the same people, and then leaving with the same people, every day. At the time, we didn’t expect a lot of people to see it. So, I had that safety net of thinking that only the twelve people that I work with on a daily basis are going to see this. That camaraderie got me to a place where I was like “I’m just going to full send it”, because I’ve created such a great relationship with everybody here.
But sometimes I did take it home. I love my car, I love driving, and so I would drive home and I would just scream Paramore. Or I’d sit in dead silence. I had to have that release, because it does feel horrific to feel the kind of emotions required to perform in a film like this.
“It felt so freeing to have those emotions witnessed, because you’re getting paid to go nuts.”
Q: Nikki is such a layered character, and at points in the film you are basically playing two characters at once. How did you go about embodying that multi-dimensionality and what was it like to switch between the two?
At the beginning of the film, she is solely herself, but the movie is also told from the perspective of Bear. So, the Nikki that we meet in the very beginning is the Nikki that he’s fallen in love with, which is why she’s so enticing. She’s so glowy, she’s so this, she’s so that. And as the film goes on, she starts acting more horrific as Bear starts to see her as more horrific. When she’s herself, I was just playing a person. When it came to playing ‘Wish Nikki’, if you will, I just trusted Curry on the timing of things. I feel like we all have intrusive thoughts, and for me, playing Nikki was like having an intrusive thought.
“I’d let her pop out, and then put her back in.”
Q: Some of my favourite scenes were actually when Nikki was off screen. You can’t see her, but you can hear her. Did you enjoy embodying her as a presence in that way, or the physical on-screen scenes more?
I enjoyed both for different reasons. We recorded some of my off screen moments in ADR, and some were done on-set. Michael Johnston is a voice actor, and so I felt like I got to do his job for a second. It’s super fun when you’re not being seen, when it’s all vocal. It was something I’d never done before.
Sometimes to portray an emotion, you don’t have to actually feel it because the visuals will pick it up. For example, whenever I’m in the corner of a room, there are shadows to play with to make me look a certain way. So, for me, if you already look horrific and then add vocals, the physical nature takes the cake for sure. But that combination was really interesting to play with.
Q: Was there anything about Nikki as a character and the experience that she goes through that you personally connected with? Did the process of playing her teach you anything that you’ll take with you into other projects?
I really connected with Nikki because it’s very honorable how honest she is with what she needs. She wants to be desired, and she wants to be loved. And granted, it is the One Wish Willow at play, but as humans, we all want to be loved, we all want to be desired, and we all want attention from our partners. I just loved how honest she was, but also that she let me step outside of my box.
She pushed me to do things that I wouldn’t normally be comfortable with, like screaming at the top of my lungs or just having the courage to be cringey, if you will, even though every eye in the room was looking at you. I’d do a take and it would be dead silent, and that silence can either make you stop and think, “oh, my God,” and you suddenly become aware of the fact that there’s multiple people watching you, or you can use it to fuel what you’re doing. So, it taught me to just do it. To literally just do it and realize being seen in that way is not that scary. It was like exposure therapy. That’s something that I’ve continued to use in my day-to-day life.
Q: You must have watched a lot of horror films in preparation for this. Are there any films that you drew particular inspiration from?
Curry had really specific ideas of what he wanted for Nikki. Before we even started filming, all of us, Michael Johnston, Megan Lawless, Cooper Tomlinson and I, the four friends in the film, went to Michael’s house and watched Hereditary with Curry. I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life.
Q: You haven’t been the same since?
At the end, when she’s on the roof? No, ma’am. Every single time that I walked into a bathroom after watching that, I would just look up. But yeah, we watched Hereditary to get an idea of the tonality that Curry was going for. We also watched Get Out and focused a lot on the moments where characters are showing an emotion underneath, but saying something completely different, and how horrific that is.
In terms of inspiration for Nikki, I love Mia Goth. She brings an element of relatability to all of her characters that makes you think, “I understand you.” It doesn’t matter how the characters might be deemed in society or how they might be seen. I watched Pearl, for example, and I thought, “I get you.” That’s what I wanted people’s response to Nikki to be. I wanted people to deeply feel what she’s going through.
“I really honed in on Mia Goth’s levels of vocal and physical intensity in Pearl too, not to mimic the character, but to better understand how I could bring Nikki to life.”
Q: This is a film that flits between humor and horror, which I think makes it quite accessible. Is this accessibility something that you guys were going for as a selling point, or what do you think makes Obsession stand out?
That’s hard to answer because it’s different for every single person that watches it. I’m really selective with the horror I watch. I watched Obsession once at TIFF, and I think that’s how much I can tolerate it. I watched it with friends and family, and was like “Yay, we did this.” But that’s the only time I’ll watch it. Even though I am the person that played Nikki, it’s so horrific to never know where a person is coming from, and to never know what’s going to happen next. That sense of instability is terrifying.
And then on the other hand, it’s terrifying to see what Bear is capable of, especially because he’s someone that Nikki found such comfort in as a friend. It’s horrific on both sides to see someone turn and switch like that, to not be the person that you thought they were. Obsession triggers such a human terror response that really messes with you after the fact, and makes you think “Who can I trust?” Even though I was in the film, I’m not excluded from that feeling. I think that is what’s going to linger with audiences.
Q: On the topic of obsession, and for a more fun question, what is Inde Navarratte obsessed with right now?
Oh, my god. Girl. How much time do you have? [laughs]
Q: Anything fun?
I’m obsessed with my nails right now. They’re butter yellow, with little gems to make it look like an eyebrow piercing. They make me very happy. I’m very obsessed with nails right now. I’m also obsessed with reading. I just finished this book called Fourth Wing. I heard they’re making a TV series about it, and I’m stoked. I loved that series, I couldn’t put it down. I’m also obsessed with playing pool with my friends. There’s three things that I’m obsessed with right now.
Q: What’s next for you? Are you going to do more horror? Are there any genres you’re dying to do, or anyone you’re dying to work with?
I’m dipping my toe into action next year, which I’m really excited about, because I’ve loved action films since I was a kid. I’m a very tiny person, I’ve always loved that oxymoron in action, me being so tiny but whooping ass. I just think it’s great.
There’s a lot of people that I really want to work with, but I’m most interested in grounded films right now. I love horror, and I would never want to fully step out of that. But I also want to dip my toe in everything humanly possible.
Q: Finally, if you were a shot in a film, what would that look like?
What immediately came to mind at first, and I’m going to use my gut feeling here, is the first Percy Jackson movie with Logan Lerman, when he’s under the water sitting at the base of a pool. He feels at home. I love being underwater, so that would be it for me.
“Percy Jackson, at the base of a pool is what Inde Navarrette feels like right now. That’s the headline.”
