Set Visit Interview with Zoey Luna from THE CRAFT: LEGACY
Alyse Wax
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Blumhouse and director Zoe Lister-Jones’ The Craft sequel, The Craft: Legacy, with Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna, Nicholas Galitzine, David Duchovny, and Michelle Monaghan will head straight to on-demand platforms on October 28th. In the lead-up to the film’s release, we’ll be sharing a series of interviews from our set visit in 2019.
Today, we’re talking to up-and-coming transgender actress Zoey Luna! Give the interview a read below the trailer and synopsis.
Synopsis:
In Blumhouse’s continuation of the cult hit The Craft, an eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.
We’ve been consistently asking the four of you [teenage leads] what’s your personal connection to The Craft and witchcraft.
Zoey Luna: I have many. I’m such a good interviewee. My personal connection to The Craft is, when I was twelve years old. Basically, I met this director who was pitching an idea for an all LGTBQ Craft reboot, and she said I’d be perfect when I’m seventeen, eighteen. Then years later I get an email from the casting director and was like “Hey, we heard from GLADD that you’d be a great actress for this role.” And I was like, “Holy shit, that girl was right!” Also, the characters is so insanely close to myself because not only is she trans, Latina, and a witch, I’m all three. She also gets kicked out by her mom and that happened to me when I was seventeen, a couple months ago. Shit is just crazy; life imitates art or art imitates life–I don’t know but yeah, it’s crazy.
So your trans status factors into your character?
ZL: No, definitely not. I think me and my character are both on the same frequency where we decide that being trans is just background. So yeah, me and her are very chill on that whole aspect.
Can you tell us a little bit about your character and her background in the movie?
ZL: Yeah, so my character, her name is Lourdes, she is a Tauris. I don’t know how old she is but yeah, she’s a teenage witch living her life, learning how to let people in her life, learning how to accept love and trying to find her inner balance.
I was going to ask about your own background with witchcraft, in your own personal life and how that works with Lourdes?
ZL: I think it’s my great grandmother, my grandmother too, they both actually have the witch blood. So it got passed down to me. Not everyone in my family, unfortunately, so yeah, it’s in the blood. I’ve had witchcraft in my blood from generations. I’m a practicing witch; I do Tarot, psychic intuition shit. I’m not very textbook-like in the way I define my witchcraft; it’s very whatever goes.
Can you explain why it was important for you to be in this movie?
ZL: It was extremely important for me to be in this movie because obviously, I’m trans and there are not that many trans people who are in film who are not just a fucking sex worker that gets killed at the end. It was important to me because I’m doing it for the kids; for the little girls who grew up and didn’t have someone to look up to. I don’t want to make this whole interview about being the girl with the penis but I would like to say that is an important factor: That there isn’t a lot of children that have inspiration to look up to and my character, she’s fucking fabulous. And I think she’s opening up a lot of doors. I just saw this role as a rocket launcher, not only for my career personally but also for everyone else in Hollywood to wake the fuck up and see there aren’t just people who are thirty years old and in transition. It’s also important because fuck, it’s The Craft, like of course.
Yesterday was a transgender day of remembrance, and your sort of coming out as an activist is what the bio said. When you were twelve you spoke at the transgender day of remembrance, that was kind of your first public event. That was yesterday, now here you are helming this hugely whispered about remake that’s hugely important to teenagers. Emotionally what is that like, to be on the one hand someone who came out as an activist looking for representation and visibility, now that’s who you are in an artistic sense?
ZL: I would always say that for me, I never came out looking to be an activist. I was looking to be free and myself. For years people told me who I was, who they thought I was and when I came out, it did come with a lot of media attention. It came with me having a voice and personally, I felt I had to learn how to use it or fucking just shut up. Honestly, there’s a lot of people who can put in their input; a lot of people who feel they know every single thing about life and that’s not the case. For me, I’m a very understanding and accepting person. I think becoming an activist was just so amazing because it’s really truly something that I feel I can portray and be. I believe it’s not being a role model, it’s being a real model and I think it’s just fucking insane that I am able to be an activist while also simultaneously be able to produce my meaning into the world by creating art, movies, television. It’s a gift.
With all the witchcraft on set and everything, have there been any weird occurrences or has anything happened?
ZL: There has been and it just slipped my mind. We were filming a scene in one of the houses and there was this light that just kept blocking Cailee’s light, and they were like, “What’s in front of it, is it the camera guy… ” It was nothing. So every once in a while, when they would try to film the shot there would be something standing in front of the light, then the next day we all came to set and it was like, “Nope!” So we called a witch practitioner; she blessed the set, a lot of confused souls apparently,
Media: Was that the hospice set?
Zoey: Yes, Aerin Fogel is amazing. And also, I don’t know, I think there’s been a lot of synchronicity happening, growing between all of us, the castmates. There’s just been a lot of spiritual shit happening without it being spooky. I think spirituality doesn’t necessarily have to be spooky all the time.
Could you talk a little bit more about your time with the cast, both on and off set during filming? It seems that everyone gets along really well.
ZL: Oh my god, we’re having a blast on and off set. Honestly, all of us vibe; all of us really connect with each other. We’re all going through similar things: breakups, me leaving my fiancé, shit’s happening. We’re all getting close, loving each other and on each other and bringing each other to be the best versions of ourselves. This is just a dream. It doesn’t even feel like reality, because I know a lot of sets do not go like this and honestly, this is the happiest set I’ve ever worked on.
Can you speak to the importance of also, regarding representation, being a Latina? Was that a really significant part of your process and excitement for this?
ZL: If I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve started to separate myself from identifying myself as a trans, Latino person because bitch, that’s the background. Sorry, I have the mouth of a sailor, it’s horrible. But, it has been an important part in this process but it hasn’t been an important part in the narrative or the story, and I think that’s so insanely important, because there are LGBTQ people, there are Latinos, there are black people. We all exist among us and the more we signify it, the more we glorify our narratives for our genders or specific things, things that we can’t control. It’s just kind of not setting us anywhere else than to be trans people.
We talked to Aerin Fogel before. Could you talk a little bit about, since you already know so much about this culture? Is there anything you learned from her?
ZL: She did teach me about deacons of astrology, so you know like there is a season to every sign. So in the beginning of the season, middle and end of the season there are different deacons and she helped me understand a lot more about which was very cool. I’m very into astrology and personally, I would say the one thing I’ve learned is you can learn a shit ton, you can go to seminar after seminar, but if you don’t ever listen to your own intuition, you’re butt fucked. That’s just the truth. You need to be your own teacher and also allow other people to be your teacher, but you just have to stick with what resonates with you.
Check back Monday for another interview from the set of The Craft: Legacy!
Categorized:Interviews News
