With “Suncoast”, Nico Parker steps out of her famous parents' shadows

The daughter of Thandiwe Newton and Ol Parker talks her triumphant Sundance-winning turn in "Suncoast," "The Last of Us" costar Pedro Pascal, lessons from mom and dad, and more.

Nico Parker was about 9 or 10 when she visited her mother, actress Thandiwe Newton, on set of sci-fi western Westworld and came across a prosthetic of her mom's corpse.

“I was telling my friend about it and laughing and he was like, ‘Nico, that sounds really dark,’” Parker, now 19, recalls. “And I was like, ‘It wasn't! It was funny.’ He was like, ‘Are you sure?’ It was fine. It was across the room so it was very much, this is obviously not real. There was a moment of genuine, mom! But you get over it quickly.” Fine, it might have been “potentially scarring for a child,” she concedes. “Maybe I'll speak about it in therapy one day.”

Parker, whose father is director Ol Parker (Mamma Mia 2, Ticket to Paradise), practically grew up on sets. “I was lucky to be able to experience that at such a young age,” she says, “but because I was so little, it was just like, this is just my parents' job. I didn't see it as a flashy, exciting thing.” To cast Parker off as simply another “nepo baby,” though, would be woefully unwise. 

The young star recently won the Sundance Film Festival’s Breakthrough Performance Award for her triumphant turn in Suncoast, Laura Chinn’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age dramedy that follows a teenager named Doris (Parker) and her iron-willed mother (Laura Linney) as they move her terminally ill brother into a hospice to live out the final days of his life.

“I was so taken aback by the story,” Parker says over Zoom shortly after Sundance. The spitting image of Newton, Parker has dialed in from Belfast, Ireland, where she’s been camped out since mid-January to film the How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake. “Just the fact that it was somewhat autobiographical; I found it insane that someone could take such a difficult time in their life and turn it into something that could resonate with people. I was in awe of Laura Chinn immediately.”

Set in Chinn’s pastel-hued hometown of Clearwater, Fla., in 2005, Suncoast takes place during the landmark Theresa “Terri” Schiavo case: Schiavo’s husband is fighting the courts to allow his wife, who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years, the right to die while his in-laws contest his efforts. Doris’ brother Max (Cree Kawa), diagnosed with brain cancer, has been moved to the same facility as Schiavo, where throngs of devout protesters with aggressive signage have set up shop outside. It’s there, at the hospice in which the film takes its name, that Doris strikes up an unlikely friendship with Paul (Woody Harrelson), an eccentric activist and widower who believes all life is precious.

The friendship helps build to the emotional core of the story. After many years as Max’s caregiver while mom Kristine works to pay the bills, Doris just wants to be a normal teenager: Learn to drive, throw a house party. But the benevolent Paul informs her she’s not a normal teenager, that the pain she carries doesn’t cease once her brother’s gone.

Building the rapport came naturally. Notably, Harrelson starred opposite his young costar’s mother in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. “Me and her are fairly similar, so he and I got on so quickly,” Parker says. The actors first crossed paths during Solo's production at Pinewood Studios in Parker's native London where she was simultaneously shooting the live-action Dumbo across the street. Just don’t ask Harrelson about it. 

“He does not remember us meeting,” she says. “To be fair, it was so unbelievably brief, but I still was actually quite offended when he said he didn't remember.”

The insights that Paul tries to impart on Doris eventually lead up to a gut-wrenching climax between Doris and her brother, one that Parker called “incredibly cathartic” to film after having largely played the teenager with tender restraint. “An exhale is the way I would think of it,” she says. “I felt like I had, at the same time as Doris, built up all of that emotion so that when it got to the day [of filming], it was all right there in front of me. It was so sad, but really beautiful.”

Parker has always loved storytelling.

“I would always put on shows for my parents,” she recalls. But it actually wasn’t until she was cast, at age 11, in her first-ever role in Tim Burton’s 2019 live-action Dumbo remake that she realized she wanted to pursue this particular avenue of storytelling. “For a while, quite intensely, I wanted to be a dancer. I loved ballet.” She played Milly Farrier, the ambitious daughter of Colin Farrell’s war veteran and former circus performer, and once shared an endearing anecdote on the talk show circuit about having a crush on her onscreen dad during filming. “I wish I’d never said that!” she sheepishly admits. “Just because if I ever see him, I'm like, Oh no, do you know? He 100 percent knew at the time, there was no way of not. He would come in and I would blush.”

Dumbo led to a three-episode arc on the 2020 horror series The Third Day, playing Naomie Harris’ eldest daughter, then a small turn in Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy’s 2021 sci-fi film Reminiscence, starring opposite none other than her mother. Yes, even Newton’s own children find themselves completely mesmerized by her. “Getting to watch her work when I visit her on set is amazing, but getting to see it firsthand acting with her — you can't pull your eyes away from her,” Parker says. “She’s so brilliant.”

After Reminiscence came 2023’s The Last of Us, HBO's post-apocalyptic drama series based on the popular video game franchise that propelled her onto a larger stage. In a brief but memorable turn, Parker played Sarah, the teenage daughter of Pedro Pascal’s Joel who meets her demise at the end of the series premiere. Parker is proud of the work she did given the initial casting backlash she received online, a response all too familiar for BIPOC actors. “A lot of people [got] really angry because in the game she's white with blue eyes and blonde hair,” she recalls. “It was such an intense discourse.”

It’s a jarring place to be, the internet. While much of her generational counterparts are terminally online, Parker is more careful in how she navigates that space. “The internet feels like a safe space for people to be deeply hateful and it's quite scary. It can leave a bad taste in your mouth.” But she seems to have a firm grip on reality (the toxicity “is not real,” she observes) and does not allow the negativity to invade her space. The same racist vitriol has once again emerged in her casting as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon, but, as Parker astutely puts it, “Your work speaks for itself.”

It’s also occasionally a fun space to be, the internet. Parker laughs when the subject of Pascal being hailed as the Internet’s Daddy is broached. “It’s funny,” she says of the discourse. “There are times when he feels paternal to me. He’s protective of me, which I appreciate. Sometimes I’m like, ‘You’re such a dad.’” But, no, it doesn’t totally freak her out that her onscreen father is being spoken about in that regard. “It’s great. He's so good looking and fun and charming.” Then, a thoughtful addition to her response: “If it was ever to be annoying him or making him uncomfortable, then I would greatly disapprove. But if he is welcoming of it, then I'll welcome it with him.”

Parker calls her friendship with Pascal one of the best things to come out of her time on the show. (And there have been many.) “I've said it to him, but I feel like I so desperately needed someone like him in my life at that point. He was there at the exact right time and welcomed me with open arms. I’m so grateful for him.” Oh, and a note to series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann while we’re on topic: “I'm aware that they're filming the second season soon, so I'm still waiting on my invitation to be a ghost.”

But for now, Parker has her feet fully planted in the How to Train Your Dragon universe. (No, she can’t say much about it.) As for what comes next, she’s learning to embrace the unpredictability of it all — a philosophy her parents helped instill into her. “I'm becoming more comfortable with it, but there's uncertainty with working in the industry,” she says. “You never know what job you'll do next, when your next job will be. I'm starting to attempt to lean into that more and appreciate how exciting it can be, because not all jobs can give you that constant intrigue. That's definitely something that they've attempted to help me see as a positive rather than a negative.”

It sounds like a healthy philosophy. A prosthetic corpse certainly couldn’t have taught it.

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