FKA Twigs Always Knew She Was Meant to Act
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It may seem like FKA Twigs is switching gears, but in her mind, she’s been meaning to be right where she is all along.
After starting her career as a backup dancer, Twigs found her breakthrough in the early 2010s with a string of experimental, avant-pop songs that placed her at the vanguard of the music industry. Since then, she’s released three EPs and two studio albums of breathtaking music, and her latest release—the 2022 mixtape Caprisongs—was named one of the best albums of the year by outlets like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, and NPR. But in addition to her music, Twigs (who was born Tahliah Debrett Barnett) has always fostered an almost insatiable appetite to try—and master—new things, be it pole dancing, wushu, or performance art. Now, she’s ready to take on her next big challenge: acting.
While the change of course may surprise some, Twigs will be the first to tell you that drama was always her first love. “When I was a child, I actually was really more into acting than anything else, and I got an educational and a drama scholarship to go to a really good private school in the countryside,” she over the phone, just days before her new superhero horror flick, The Crow, is set to arrive in theaters.
As the second cinematic reimagining of the 1989 comic book series of the same name, The Crow has been a long time in the making. Having entered development back in 2008, the reboot went through a series of changes behind the scenes before eventually landing Rupert Sanders as director and Bill Skarsg?rd as Eric, or “the crow.” Then, in 2022, Twigs joined the project.
In the movie, the multitalented star portrays Eric’s love interest, Shelly, a gifted artist who struggles with the secrets of her past. Those who have read the comic book or seen the ’94 film know that Shelly dies early on, only appearing throughout the rest of the story in ghostly flashbacks. However, in this new iteration, her character gets much more screen time, an update that motivated Twigs as she embodied the part. “I really wanted to accept the challenge of making Shelley as 3D as possible,” she says. “I think that bringing in like the feminine divine energy just brings such heart.”
The project marks Twigs’s major film debut, following her role in Honey Boy (2019), which only got a limited theatrical release. And now, she’s looking forward to a number of other big movie projects, including The Carpenter’s Son and Mother Mary, for which her co-stars will include the likes of Anne Hathaway and Nicolas Cage.
“I’ve always known in my heart I was going to come back around to [acting],” she says. “I just didn't know when. And, it’s really nice to be here now... I feel like I’ve got a new lease for life in my artistry. I love learning and getting better at things, so I feel just incredibly lucky—after having over a decade in the industry—to have found a new craft that I can express myself and feel like a beginner.”
Fans of Twigs’s music will pleased to know that she does a little bit of singing in The Crow (even if the song gets cut short). “It’s a shame that there’s not more of it because it’s a really beautiful song,” Twigs says. But really, it’s the English star’s acting that takes the spotlight, and she does a fabulous job of articulating Shelly’s complexities.
When she breaks down her acting process, Twigs gets animated, saying, “You’re just this toolbox. You just need to find the tools, you know, sometimes you need other people to use your tools for you... It’s really, really exciting.”
Of course, like the layers that make up her music and visual projects, FKA Twigs will always have secret talents and projects the world doesn’t know about (in our interview alone, I learn that she did voice work for a cat commercial, worked as a wedding singer, and even starred on an English TV program as a kid akin to the Mickey Mouse Club). But it’s up to Twigs when she shares those facets of her personality with the world; for now, acting is finally front and center.
“One day I’d love to do something where I can just kind of, leave it all on the stage as we say—push my different crafts to their maximum [for] an incredible project,” Twigs says. “I’ll probably have to make my own.”
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