Plenty performers would be envious of British actor Naomi Ackie’s career, which has included a supporting role in Star Wars and a breakout performance in Blink Twice, but right now she has a new ambition. “A cinema named after me. That would be the coolest thing ever.”
That’s a level of fame that’s already been reached by Bong Joon Ho, after whom Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar is named. However, Ackie knows the Parasite Oscar winner better and more personally through working with him in Mickey 17, his latest science-fiction satire. In it, Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, a desperate man who flees Earth on a colony ship as an expendable: the lowest of the low who can be sacrificed for menial jobs, science experiments, or just because someone forgets to check on the machine that prints a new body for his psyche when the last one undergoes explosive decompression, freezes to death, bleeds out of every orifice. One Mickey is much like another, as shown when no one really notices when the latest duplicate, Mickey 18, is printed while the rumors of Mickey 17’s death are still being greatly exaggerated.
At the same time, there’s only one Nasha, as played by Ackie. A security officer and secret troublemaker, she’s as busy contending with the different sides of herself as Mickey is. Ackie said that when she first received the script, she found herself “reading it from two different angles. As a story, it’s riveting, and then watching Nasha’s character arc all the way through was super-exciting too. She’s an unexpected character, and I just didn’t see that in Mickey’s love interest.”
Austin Chronicle: The different Mickeys are the different parts of his personality coming to the fore and they show the contradictions in him, whereas Nasha is just constant contradictions.
Naomi Ackie: It’s wild. The fact that she totally contradicts herself. She works in security and safety but she’s breaking the rules. She’s a fierce love but she’s got a really wicked temper on her. She’s tender in the way she loves him in one sense but actually quite aggressive in others. She wants to have fun, she has a very strong moral compass, and she is unwitting and unaware of what she is representing.
She is a very free character, and I had just come off of Blink Twice playing the opposite. Frida was very self-judgmental and very watchful and hyperfocused on people. To play someone directly after who did not give a fuck at all was really freeing for me.
AC: When you’ve got a film like this where there’s an actor playing multiple parts, everyone concentrates on the challenges for them of getting the different iterations of the character. But they tend to ignore the challenges for the rest of the cast, of going, “Hang on, which Robert am I talking to now?”
NA: It’s human nature, you get used to anything. At first it was a bit jarring. It was like, back in the day – this isn’t going to translate for Austin, Texas readers – there was a show, “Tonight, Matthew, I will be …”
AC: [Karaoke impression show] Stars in Their Eyes!
NA: Stars in Their Eyes! Yes! So Robert would go behind the curtain as Mickey 18 and come back out as 17. What was brilliant and what Robert is so good at is that his characters are so all-encompassing. He breathes such beautiful life into them that my job was was only to react to what each character was putting out.
So that part was easy. It is a mind-eff when you had another guy playing Rob’s body double. So in scenes where [Mickey 17 and Mickey 18] are in the same shot, we’d have to shoot them twice through and then swap them round. But ultimately Bong and the crew organized the day so extremely well that it felt seamless. A lot of that burden went on to Rob, if anything. I didn’t really feel much of it at all. I just had to say different lines, re-running it a few more times. To be honest, I was thinking at the time, “This is great, because I get a few more takes in and try to be a better actor, for the love of god.”
AC: So when Rob’s doing an American accent, does he drop back into his English accents when he’s out of a scene?
NA He does, and I don’t know how he does it. When I’m doing an American accent I’m American the whole time because I can’t switch back and forth. The vowels all get mixed up in my brain, whereas it’s so natural to him.
AC: And one of the interesting things about Bong is that his casts and crews now are so internationalized.
NA: Gosh, in terms of his creative freedom he’s in this prime spot and he’s earned it. He can do anything, and he should do anything and everything. Ultimately Bong’s understanding of people and the things that fascinate him most are universal. He’s just got a brilliant attitude to the humor and tragedy of being alive. There’s such a care I think he has of the world he lives in, and a love of the people who live in it, that you just can’t help but love his projects.
Mickey 17 is in cinemas now. Find our review and showtimes here.
This article appears in March 7 • 2025.
