As Smile 2 continues scaring up bigger audiences than its popular predecessor at the global and domestic box offices, director Parker Finn is providing some insight into the decisions that went into the making of his horror sequel.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the Smile helmer said he “totally” cast actor Ray Nicholson in the Naomi Scott starrer as an homage to his “favorite film of all time” — Stanley Kubrick’s pioneering classic, The Shining.
“I think I’m always trying to reference The Shining,” he said.
“With Ray, he auditioned for that role. The audition was so strong. Of course, Jack Nicholson is one of my favorite actors of all time. I love that Ray has very strong genes, and his smile, instantly, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s like looking at a young Jack.’”
He continued, “What really struck me was how well he slipped into that venomous but charming character he’s playing in the film. He could bring again that feeling of, I’m really, really anxious, but part of it is also tickling me.”
While Finn said he did not originate the role of Paul, the late actor husband to Scott’s global pop star character Skye Riley, for Ray Nicholson, he called the casting “wonderful kismet.”
Indeed, many fans have drawn, if obvious but still uncanny, similarities between father and son online, with Ray Nicholson commenting on the chatter to Deadline last week at the film’s red carpet premiere: “He’s my inspiration. I ate dinner with him every night. I studied it, that’s how I learned to be a human being. So, of course we’re gonna be kind of similar,” he said, adding that he lists his father as his “hero.”
Later in the interview with EW, Finn said his tribute to the 1980 genre staple went beyond just Ray Nicholson’s casting, with a gala scene in the film borrowing hues depicted in the Overlook Hotel bar scenes.
“As I was working with my costume designer, Alexis Forte, we started trying stuff on Ray for that scene, and as soon as we put what became the costume in the film on him, we were like, ‘Oh my God, this is The Shining. He looks exactly like Jack,” he explained.
Smile 2, which premiered in theaters Friday, unfolds as a pop phenom contends with the inexplicable and escalating effects of dealing with a haunting smiling figure that follows her wherever she goes. For the Paramount sequel, which also stars Rosemarie DeWitt, Kyle Gallner, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Raúl Castillo and Dylan Gelula, Finn drew from the real-life lore of women affected by the often brutal machinations of fame, including Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and Britney Spears.