Naomi Ackie on Audience Reactions to ‘Blink Twice’ and Working with Zoë Kravitz

“I woke up quite fresh actually,” says Naomi Ackie from the glam chair, the morning after the premiere of her new movie “Blink Twice.” “It was just so good to see the film with an audience.” 

“Blink Twice” is very much a movie to be seen in a theater, surrounded by people gasping and laughing around you. Zoë Kravitz‘s directorial debut, the movie — originally called “Pussy Island” — stars Ackie as a woman working a catering gig when she meets a wealthy tech billionaire (played by Channing Tatum) and accepts his offer to come to his private island. Once on the island, things slowly reveal themselves to be not as they seem.

Ackie was prepping to portray Whitney Houston in the 2022 movie “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” when she got the script for Kravitz’s movie from her agents. 

“I was holed up in my flat in London just trying to figure out how to make this character work, and I got an email from my agents being like, ‘hey, Zoë Kravitz wants to talk to you about this film called ‘Pussy Island,’ and I was like, ‘oh, that is the coolest title for a film ever. I actually don’t need to know what it’s about,’” she jokes.

Upon reading the script she was “blown away” and says that even having been in the movie, she was still surprised by many parts when she saw it for the first time while Kravitz was in London, where Ackie is based.

“How Zoë, with her incredible editor, chose to edit the film completely changes it and makes it so immersive. And we already knew it was going to be that, but I had no clue it was going to be as immersive and visceral as it is,” Ackie says.

For the L.A. premiere Thursday, Ackie worked with stylist Nicky Yates on selecting a cream Ferragamo look from the fall 2024 collection, consisting of a wool blend duchesse cowl neck minidress and sheer skirt with raffia trimming.

“We started doing our little look board thing on Pinterest a while ago, and I wanted to explore this thing of revealing and not revealing, kind of sexy, but what sexy means to me,” Ackie explains. “Nicky had spotted this gorgeous Ferragamo dress, and I was like, ‘that is a bit of me.’ It’s got a beautiful low back. It’s a sheer skirt, it’s a two-piece, with beautiful draping. I asked her the other day what the fabric was and she said it was like double silk, which I’ve never heard of before, but it’s very ‘rich girl on holiday’ kind of vibes, which is what we’re kind of going for.”

Up next, Ackie will be seen in the movie “Mickey 17,” from the Oscar-winning director of “Parasite” Bong Joon-ho. She stars in the film alongside Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Colette and Steven Yeun. She’s currently in the midst of shooting “Thursday Murder Club” for Netflix, which is based on the British book series. 

As for the takeaways from “Blink Twice,” which officially hits theaters Aug. 23, Ackie says she hopes it leaves people talking.

“What I really hope is that people walk out feeling high energy and they want to talk about it. They want to discuss it with whoever they’ve gone to see the film with,” she says. “The way people have described it is ‘it’s really serious and it’s really dark, but we left feeling not like we had our energy stacked from us, and we were excited about it and we were entertained, but also feeling like, wow, I’ve been on kind of a thrill ride and I want to share that with someone.’ I think sharing talks and experiences with people from that space is really useful.”