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Zoë Kravitz went into Apple TV+'s The Studio just as her unhinged alter ego approached Continental Studios head Matt Remick's (Seth Rogen) "old school Hollywood buffet" -- completely blind. The guest star reprises what she fondly calls a "more psychotic" version of herself after a statuette-worthy turn in "The Golden Globes" episode, returning in a two-part Season 1 closer dedicated to Las Vegas and entertainment mainstay CinemaCon.
"I hadn't read anything, and I also didn't even really know how many guest spots they were planning on having and who they were going to get," Kravitz told Deadline in an interview about first being approached for the blisteringly funny satire via a call from her agent. "It was just really about loving the thing they were wanting to explore in terms of filmmaking and the industry and where we're at right now. And I thought it was really thought-provoking."
A self-described "huge fan" of Rogen and Evan Goldberg's -- who co-created the inside-baseball Hollywood series alongside Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez -- Kravitz was eager to take the meeting; she first appeared as an alternate of herself slyly campaigning for a Golden Globe despite a shallow veneer of humility, with impeccable line readings like "I'm already rich, I'm already famous, winning awards is like the only thing that's left" and an awards speech template so meticulously telegraphed that it borders on terrifying. After that, Rogen and Goldberg were just as keen to continue collaboration, rewriting the final two scripts to add her character in after working with her.
"She's so funny, she's incredible," Rogen told Deadline in an earlier interview, adding, "And everybody was so relieved when I sobbed like twice, which came out after we shot the episode, and it was really good, and I was like, 'Oh thank God, the whole episode makes a little more sense now.'"
Given the show's long shots, everything is filmed fairly "by the book," Kravitz said, though there's a "lot of conversation" before the camera begins rolling and she praised the longtime Point Grey Pictures producers for being "incredibly collaborative" and holding steadfast to a "super clear" vision.
"I would like to believe that I'm not this person that, like, desperately wants an award. But there is this really interesting thing, where, obviously, if you're campaigning for an award, in order to even kind of be nominated, you do have to participate a certain amount, which means it's something that you want, which is OK, but it's funny how people do pretend like they don't care at all when you do have to care a certain amount to even be considered," she said. "So I think that kind of humble game that we like to play -- of course, there's elements of all of us that want to win, that want to be the best and so while I do think I was channeling hopefully a person that is a little bit more psychotic than I am, I do think that we all have parts of us that do want to win and are embarrassed to let that part be seen. And I thought it was a cool thing to really play both sides of that."
As such, Kravitz was thrilled to return for Episodes 9 and 10, which see her buttoned-up A-Lister succumb to a truly ungodly grammage of psilocybin mushrooms thanks to Remick's ill-fated party platter of assorted drugs. The chaotic finale follows a deeply inebriated Kravitz (and Dave Franco and Bryan Cranston's Continental CEO Griffin Mill) as she is coddled and cajoled into sobering up enough to pull off an onstage presentation to tease her forthcoming "Black Wing" project.
"Especially after knowing what you know about this version of Zoë, who's kind of a control freak in a lot of ways, it was really cool to be able to put her in a situation where she's completely out of control," the Caught Stealing star explained.
Minutes before she takes the stage, Kravitz's character is mimicking every word spoken to her and feeling like a "skin sausage." Despite this, she miraculously nails her presentation and heads off stage, where she gleefully exclaims, "I'm going pee-pee," indicating the evidence on the front of her trousers.
When asked if she had any reservations about spoofing herself on screen, Kravitz was adamant: "Oh, no. If you can't make fun of yourself, I think there's something wrong. And so I was really excited to make fun of myself, or the idea of myself, and the awards cycle, and all of that. I think it's something to laugh at and to explore -- it's not just pointing and laughing."
The reason it works, Kravitz maintained, is because the lampooning of the industry -- which can feel like "the center of the universe" -- is "really done through the lens of people who love film. And so I think that is the part that you also really feel, is that this isn't just making fun of something, this is making fun of the complications around something that we all care for so deeply."
The Studio, now renewed for Season 2, is not out of film tape yet, and Kravitz hopes to get back into the shenanigans next year: "Oh, my God, not only would I be open, but I would be very disappointed if I didn't get to [come back]," she said.
She continued, "I have always really wanted to do more comedy. It's something that I really like and something that I want to get better at. I like comedy, I'm a pretty ridiculous person, so it's fun to be able to play in that space ... comedy is so hard, and I think people forget that because the whole point is to make it look easy."