I meet the actress Naomi Ackie outside Angel Station in North London on a balmy July afternoon. After doing the very British commentary-on-the-weather thing, we take a right and climb down a few steps onto the narrow canal path lined with houseboats. Ackie started these daily walks during the pandemic after moving out of a house share into her own place, though she’s quick to add that she’s still renting: “I don’t come from money.†As we talk, she smoothly navigates by the bikes whizzing past us and coos at cute dogs. This neighborhood feels good for her soul, she says. “I don’t think I’ll ever leave.â€
She moved to Angel from Tottenham around the same time she got the main role in the music biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody in 2020. While preparing for that film, she was offered the lead in the new psychological thriller Blink Twice. Next year, she’ll be in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming sci-fi epic, Mickey 17. “When it rains, it pours,†she says with a grin.
Directed by Zoë Kravitz, who began writing the script with E. T. Feigenbaum in 2017, Blink Twice, formerly called Pussy Island, picks apart gendered power dynamics and trauma through the lens of the superelite. Ackie plays Frida, an undervalued caterer infatuated with a billionaire tech bro named Slater King (an unsettling Channing Tatum), who has recently been canceled for an unnamed indiscretion. After Frida and her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), charm him at a dinner, he whisks them away to his private tropical island alongside a handful of other guests, including a former contestant on a Survivor-type reality show (Adria Arjona) and Slater’s smarmy right-hand man, Vic (Christian Slater). On the island, they eat exquisite meals and throw lavish, drug-fueled parties, but eventually Frida realizes something is very, very wrong.
It doesn’t spoil anything to say that Blink Twice is full of feminist-leaning commentary and symbolism — think of a more nuanced Promising Young Woman mixed with a more on-the-nose Get Out. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the movie was conceptualized the same year the Me Too movement began gaining traction.
Kravitz’s direction is solid, but it’s Ackie who truly sells the movie. Her face is a kaleidoscope of emotion from the first frame, her eyes full of eerie conviction. The performance is par for the course for Ackie, who’s been a scene-stealer in an array of roles since she graduated from drama school in 2012.
Frida could very well be Ackie’s breakout, though that phrase has been bandied about ever since she won the British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer in 2017 for her role as Anna, a mistreated maid in Lady Macbeth. In 2020, she won a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA TV Award for her performance as an unnerving stalker in the dark-comedy series The End of the F***ing World. She’s had many almost-star-making moments, from her 2019 role in the Star Wars franchise to the Whitney biopic to now with Blink Twice. “I’m still breaking through,†she says. “You know what? Cool.â€
We reach the end of the canal path and head to a swanky gastropub in London Fields. “I love this place,†she says, although she can’t remember the name of it. She sinks into her chair and orders us gin-and-tonics.
Ackie, 31, was born in North London to second-generation Grenadian parents; her mother worked for the National Health Service and her father for London’s transport authority. She always knew she wanted to be an actress: “There were no other options in my head! It went from ‘Oh, I’m a child; I like playing make-believe’ to ‘I’m going to be an actress’ from the age of about 11.†She got into the prestigious Royal Central School of Speech and Drama after college. It wasn’t easy; by Ackie’s last year, she was one of the only Black students left. After graduating in 2012, she was in a string of plays, including The Snow Queen at Greenwich Theatre and Billy the Girl at Soho Theatre in 2013, before making her first TV appearance in the classic British sci-fi drama Doctor Who in 2015. In 2016, she got her first feature-film role with Lady Macbeth. She landed an assortment of smaller parts in U.K. projects, like in Idris Elba’s directorial debut, Yardie, in 2018 and as the ditzy Ruby in the Channel 4 comedy The Bisexual in 2018. In 2019, her career reached new heights when she played a stormtrooper in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. From there, she starred in season two of the critically acclaimed The End of the F***ing World and played Lena Waithe’s partner in season three of Master of None in 2021. The versatility of her performances, from comedy to drama, from maids to stalkers, is a testament to her skill.
Yet as talented and as striking as she is — she looks like an off-duty pop star in a white vest, pearls, blue jeans, and an acid-wash gray cap tucked over her long braids — she’s grown skeptical of the way Hollywood casting agents see her, noting how rarely she’s been cast as a romantic lead. “I’ve got big ol’ titties and thick fucking thighs, a really gappy, big smile — my features are very Black,†she says, chuckling. When she was younger, she says she tried to fit into the industry by being “the nicest, most amiable, vanilla†person, but it didn’t matter.
Ackie once thought there would be a seminal moment when her career transformed overnight. She believed playing Whitney Houston might be that opportunity. But it was a solitary experience, and she became “intense in a not-nice way,†Ackie says. “I had to apologize to my family afterward; I was just so weird.†It took the six-month break after filming to stop crying every day: “There was a lot on the line for me.†She was afraid that as a Black woman, she would never have such a chance again. “That’s why the pressure was so high. This is the only time you will play a character this larger than life. I shouldn’t feel like that. No one should feel like that as an artist. We should always feel like there’s a limitless abundance of creativity.†While her performance received some good press — the Daily Beast called Ackie “incredible,†and Empire magazine’s Kelechi Ehenulo wrote that “Naomi Ackie delivers a commanding performance†— reviews of the film were otherwise harsh, and it earned only $59.8 million worldwide at the box office.
“It’s easier for people to absorb talent that comes from white bodies than it is to explore talent that comes from anything else outside of that,†Ackie says. She points out that Austin Butler played Elvis the same year as the Whitney biopic and says she can’t help but compare their subsequent trajectories, though the circumstances around that film were much different. “I look at my white counterparts, who are on their own journey and who are working damn fucking hard, but I also know that is a simpler experience than being someone who is racialized.†She mentions wanting a career like Daniel Day-Lewis’s: “He puts out one film every five years, everyone looks forward to it. He’s highly respected, everyone asks him the real questions.†But after Whitney, she says, “nothing happened.â€
She has a more practical view of her career now. Acting is just “my job,†she says. Although she travels there frequently for her career, she refuses to move to L.A., where everyone is “an actor, writer, producer, director, an Instagram model.†When she’s not working, she’s reading fantasy novels (she’s especially excited for the next installment of Children of Blood and Bone), strength training at the gym, or hanging out with her boyfriend. She’s pleasantly surprised when a role like Frida comes along that allows her to flex her acting range in a way not many Black actresses have the opportunity to. “I read the script in no more than an hour and a half,†she says. “The variety of emotion in one character has always been the thing I crave. That’s when going into work doesn’t feel like work.â€
Production for Blink Twice took some time to come together, but the cast quickly got along, living in the Mexican hotel where the film was shot. They spent the first two weeks getting to know one another, doing fittings, and subconsciously taking on their characters. “The subject matter is pretty fucking dark,†Ackie says, but the cast and crew were “vibing a lot of the time†and that was mainly owing to Kravitz’s direction. “She’s got such an amazing, incredible insight into how she likes to tell stories,†Ackie says.
Kravitz first heard about Ackie from her casting director. “I watched a bunch of her work, including Master of None and The End of the F***ing World, and was blown away. We talked, and she had such a clear understanding of the tone of the film and the journey of the character,†Kravitz says. “Her talent just oozes out of her in this way that is so easy.â€
Next year, Ackie will co-star in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 alongside Robert Pattinson. Bong’s team approached Ackie while she was filming Whitney. Because she was so tired from shooting, she felt less guarded in her conversations with his team. “I wasn’t putting up any masks or anything; I was just me,†she says, which she believes the director appreciated and contributed to her landing the job. They filmed the movie on the Warner Bros. lot in London, and “it felt like a movie movie,†she says, with expensive sets and a large budget. Yet “Bong Joon Ho was incredible at creating a very familylike bubble within that — the crew and the cast, we were so easygoing,†which was a welcome surprise. Working with Pattinson was also a highlight. “He’s so cool, man,†she says. “The choices he makes on-camera, I’ve never quite seen anything like it.â€
She’s reached a sense of equilibrium in general about her career. Whether these films will catapult her into the next echelon of fame is no longer a chief concern. She’d rather fully commit to each role like the actors she respects. “The biggest compliment I’ve ever gotten from anyone who knows me,†she says, “is when they’re like, ‘I completely forgot it was you.’â€