•Actress Inde Navarrette, best known for playing Nikki Freeman in Obsession, said she spent time studying anime and streaming games on Twitch while navigating uncertainty about her career trajectory.
The breakout role didn’t immediately launch her to stardom. Between the film’s completion and its eventual release, Navarrette was unsure what lay ahead for her professional life, so she turned to streaming games on Twitch to make ends meet.
During this period, she began studying storytelling in film and television by watching some of her favorite anime series—specifically Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen.
“I transitioned into studying film and watching movies and asking, ‘Why do I like them?’,” Navarrette said in an October 14 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “What I like is anime, so like, why do I like that? I mean, Jujutsu Kaisen I find to be a very fascinating anime, but why is it so different than Demon Slayer?”
She pointed to structural differences between the two series as she analyzed their craft.
“With Jujutsu Kaisen, they play with timelines, right? With Demon Slayer, they don’t, it’s very linear. And what does that mean and how does that affect with storytelling?”
Inde Navarrette to The Hollywood Reporter
“I really dove into, ‘Why is Jujutsu Kaisen so good?’ And I learned about timeline and about storytelling—how a person can have a monologue at the beginning of the episode that matters two episodes later or even at the end, and that person’s dead and you don’t learn it until then—and then attaching that to my screenwriting and trying to learn that way.”
Navarrette described herself as a self-proclaimed nerd with a deep love for anime and gaming, interests reflected in her Twitch channel, which she has since scrubbed clean. In July at a fan convention, she was delighted when a fan gave her a sealed 2009 copy of Modern Warfare 2 still in its display case.
She is also branching into voice acting, naming one of her dream projects as voicing a character in a Resident Evil game.
“I wanna try something smaller to kind of test the waters, and then later, [do something] different, because video games are obviously a big interest of mine,” she said in an August interview. “I love that world, specifically—the Resident Evil world.”
Inde Navarrette
For now, Navarrette is preparing to play Rogue in Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot, promising fans she’s doing everything possible to bring the character to life.
“I’m doing everything humanly possible because I love that character,” Navarrette said. “I’ve studied that character. I want to do it justice for myself, for [director Jake Schrieier], for what they want to portray and also for what I as a fan want her to be like. I’m doing everything, exclamation point.”
Inde Navarrette
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s Nyheter Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
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