Zoë Kravitz was hell-bent on keeping the X-rated title of her directorial debut — and then she changed her mind.
Originally, Kravitz’s feature film was titled “Pussy Island,” but the thriller — coming out in theaters next month — is now called “Blink Twice.”
The 35-year-old star opened up about the title change to Entertainment Weekly.
“It was made very clear to me that ‘pussy’ is a word that we, our society, are not ready to embrace yet,” she said in the interview published Tuesday.
“There were a lot of roadblocks along the way, whether it be the MPAA not wanting to put it on a poster, or a billboard, or a kiosk; movie theaters not wanting to put it on a ticket,” Kravitz added.
The “Big Little Lies” star wrote “Blink Twice” with E.T. Feigenbaum. It stars her fiancé, Channing Tatum, as well as Naomi Ackie, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan and Geena Davis.
The story follows Slater King (Tatum), a tech executive who invites a cocktail waitress named Frida (Ackie) to his private island for some ill-fated fun.
Kravitz told EW: “Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, ‘I don’t want to see that movie,’ which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we’re so uncomfortable using.”
“But we’re not there yet,” she noted. “And I think that’s something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to. I care about people seeing the film, and I care about how it makes people feel.”
Despite the major change to the film, Kravitz said that the original NSFW name is still applicable.
“I do believe that ‘Pussy Island’ was the first thing I wrote down when I wrote this movie, and it’s the seed of the film, and the spirit of what that means to me is still alive and very much present in the film,” she explained.
“And I love the new title. I’m happy with the new title,” Kravitz continued. “I think everything happens for a reason, and I think it actually really focuses the movie in a great way. And I think that was always the way it was meant to be.”
In 2022, the daughter of Lenny Kravitz told WSJ Magazine she had no plans to change the title of her directorial debut. She also said she thought of the premise of the film from stories she’s heard about rich men bringing women to remote islands for wild nights.
“The title came from that world. The title is the seed of the story,” she said at the time. “It represents this time where it would be acceptable for a group of men to call a place that, and the illusion that we’re out of that time now.”
She also rewrote the script after the #MeToo movement arose in 2017.
Kravitz said the story was inspired by “the lack of conversation around the way women are treated specifically in the entertainment industry.”
“Blink Twice” will be released in theaters August 23.
