How filming “Blink Twice” brought Channing Tatum and Zoë Kravitz closer together
Trailer for “Blink Twice”: Channing Tatum leads the cast of the new film
“Blink Twice,” co-written and directed by Zoë Kravitz, is an “Eat the Rich” satire with a feminist twist.
Zoë Kravitz has what she calls her “director’s uniform.”
While filming her new movie “Blink Twice” in Mexico in mid-summer, the actress turned filmmaker opted for functionality over fashion, wearing sneakers, baseball caps and the occasional sports bra.
“I bought about 12 Patagonia shorts, all in different colors. It was just so hot,” Kravitz recalled on a recent Zoom call. “I really enjoyed not having to stress at all about how I looked as a director. It was so much fun to just roll out of bed every day. Even as a woman, it was really freeing.”
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“Blink Twice” (in theaters Friday) is the directorial debut of 35-year-old Kravitz, who is best known for her roles in “The Batman” and HBO’s “Big Little Lies.” The psychological thriller follows a waitress named Frida (Naomi Ackie) who is enchanted by disgraced billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), who takes her to a private island for a lavish getaway with a group of friends. But soon the women in the group lose consciousness and wake up with worrying injuries. Others disappear altogether, and Frida tries desperately to figure out what’s really going on.
Kravitz began co-writing the script seven years ago, inspired by the “anger and confusion” she felt in the wake of the Me Too movement. She wanted to explore gender power dynamics and the quiet camaraderie between women in male-dominated spaces.
“Women are expected to act like everything is fine when it’s not,” says Kravitz. “We’re expected to smile, to make everyone else feel good, to forget. I tried to find a way to highlight how bizarre that demand is.”
Zoë Kravitz relied on the cast of “Big Little Lies” when filming her “Blink Twice” movie
Kravitz grew up between Los Angeles and Miami with her famous parents, musician Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet. As a teenager, she loved films by Quentin Tarantino and Penny Marshall and always saw herself as a director, although “I didn’t really know how to take that step,” she says.
After numerous supporting roles in “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “X-Men: First Class,” she produced, starred in, and wrote the 2020 Hulu comedy “High Fidelity.” The series was short-lived, but it gave her confidence as a storyteller.
“That was the first time I felt like I had real power on a project,” Kravitz says. “Especially as a woman, you can find yourself saying, ‘Hey, I think this is how it should be done.’ Sometimes they make you feel like you should stay in your place. But you have to be confident and say, ‘No, no, no. I know what’s needed here.'”
After years of writing “Blink Twice,” she couldn’t imagine anyone else directing it. She originally wanted to play Frida, but “directing is something I’m new to and it’s hard enough. Doing both, I felt like I didn’t know why I would put myself in that situation.”
Ackie calls Kravitz “a force to be reckoned with” and strikes a tone that is both relaxed and highly focused.
“She created this atmosphere that was like, ‘We work hard and we can still have a great time,'” says Ackie, who remembers that music was constantly playing on set. “We were all hanging out together and at the same time highly motivated to work. That was thanks to her.”
Throughout the writing and editing process, Kravitz sought input from her creative friends, including Ilana Glazer, Donald Glover and Natasha Lyonne, as well as support from her Big Little Lies co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman.
“As women and artists, we just check in with each other and say, ‘How are things going? Are you OK? I’m proud of you. I can’t wait to see it,'” Kravitz says. “Having a community means a lot.”
Zoë Kravitz remembers how her fiancé Channing Tatum took care of her while she played Slater King
She also received encouragement from Tatum, 44, whom she has been dating since 2021. (They announced their engagement last fall.) She says they grew as a couple while filming: They learned when to give constructive feedback and when to just offer love and support.
“Chan’s instinct is to fix everything,” Kravitz says. “He wants to take care of me, so when I’m upset or freaking out, he always wants to fix it. Sometimes that would make me even angrier and I’d be like, ‘I just need someone to listen to me!’ But we’ve gotten so good at asking, ‘What do you need right now?’ We’re so much closer because we’ve had that experience.”
Kravitz is eager to return to writing and directing, but is still waiting for inspiration. “I’m excited, but you can’t force something like this,” she says.
She’s feeling a flood of emotions as the release date approaches: anxiety, fear and “a little sad to just let it go.” Kravitz and Tatum unveiled “Blink Twice” this month at the film’s Los Angeles premiere, where she cheekily thanked her fiancé for “trusting her to direct you as a female director.” She hopes that phrase won’t be used again in the future.
“That’s stupid, like calling a female doctor a ‘female doctor,'” Kravitz says. “I like to honor women who take that step, because it’s harder for us to get into the director’s chair. But I would prefer if people just called us directors – that feels redundant.”
