A short list of things Zoë Kravitz does during her three-episode guest stint on The Studio, playing herself:
• She pretends not to care about winning a Golden Globe while really caring whether she does;
• Accidentally ingests a dangerous amount of shrooms at a CinemaCon party in Las Vegas;
• Climbs on a hotel nightstand and refuses to come down, because she perceives it as being too far a drop;
• Conflates the movie character she’s there to promote — a vampire assassin named Blackwing — with herself;
• Plaintively wails “Where’s Zoë?!” when others decide to refer to her as Blackwing, hoping to coax her back down;
• And nails her CinemaCon moment despite all the preceding business.
Everything after the Golden Globes and through the season finale, incidentally, was not what Kravitz initially signed on for at the Apple TV+ comedy; she told The Hollywood Reporter that she was first hired just for the Globes episode. That role expanded, however, giving Kravitz a chance to lean into a big comedic part.
“It was so fun to play with them,” Kravitz told THR of the cast. “Comedy is something I’ve always wanted to do more of, and to get to do it with some of the best that we have, with Kathryn Hahn and Catherine O’Hara and Ike [Barinholtz] and Seth [Rogen, who also co-created The Studio], you’re in the presence of the greats. There was some crazy stuff that didn’t make it in, where I’m really quite out of control. But we definitely pushed it to the to the limit. When you’re working with people who are the masters of this kind of work, you feel really safe to go as far as they will let you.”
As for that craziness, Kravitz says it wasn’t a hard sell for her to sign on to The Studio, even though it was a new series and Rogen and his co-creators (Evan Goldberg, Frida Perez, Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck) were asking her to potentially make fun of herself. Kravitz says she’s a “huge fan” of Rogen’s and met with the creators about a guest role.
“They walked me through the show and told me what they were doing and how they wanted to do it. At that point, I was only going to be in the Golden Globes episode,” she says. “It had nothing to do with, ‘Is the show going to be good or not?’ It was about, these are artists that I think are really smart, that I think what they have to say is really interesting. However I can help, I’m happy to be there.”
Although she played a version of herself in the Hollywood send-up series — as did a host of other stars — Kravitz told THR she didn’t approach the part much differently than any other role.
“They had done a lot of that work for me by setting up what they wanted in the Golden Globes episode, which was this person that pretends to be very chill and doesn’t really care, and then ends up caring a lot,” she says. “I used that as my guide. Then it’s just about making fun of yourself. The best way to do that, to serve this world, is to lean into who people think you are. It’s fun to play with those ideas. We’re always performing and playing a character anyway — it’s always interesting to think about the version of yourself the world sees and the version you are in your private life.”
Apple TV+ has renewed The Studio for a second season — and as the show moves forward, it could presumably check in on production Kravitz’s film. “I know they have some ideas” about season two, Kravitz says of the show’s team, but she hasn’t heard yet whether she’ll return. She’s ready to, though: “I think it will be really funny, and I do hope I get to come back and keep going and push it even further.”
The Studio is now streaming all episodes on Apple TV+. Read THR’s interviews with co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and how they cast the A-list guest stars.
