Releasing in theaters on Friday, August 16, Skincare examines the pressure to appear successful in a world dominated by social media. Hope Goldman believes her business is finally going to flourish after booking a news segment and launching her own skincare line. However, when a competing boutique opens up across the street from her shop, she suspects the owner of driving away her customers. As the saboteur’s actions intensify, Hope teams up with her new friend, Jordan, to uncover the truth and salvage her career.
The film is directed by Austin Peters, with The Hunger Games’ Elizabeth Banks starring as Hope. Lewis Pullman, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, and Nathan Fillion make up the rest of the main cast. Banks shares that she met with Peters early in the development process and was moved by the director’s previous work. Skincare was created with Banks in mind, allowing her to authentically portray the character of Hope Goldman and relate to her struggles as a working woman in Los Angeles.
Screen Rant chats with Banks about what drew her to Skincare, how she connected with Hope, and reuniting with Nathan Fillion for the film.
Banks Saw Parallels Between Skincare And Her Own Life
Elizabeth Banks: I think what you just said is so right. The screenplay was really surprising to me, and I loved how the pressure on this character kept ramping up and up and up, and how she didn’t see what was right in front of her, and so misguided in terms of everything. I loved the vulnerability of Hope Goldman to someone who’s aging in a world in which beauty and youth are so admired.
How does she stay relevant in that world that is passing her by? There were so many parallels to my real life as well. I recognized her in me, and I recognized that part of LA. I recognized why things could go so easily wrong when you’re so focused on holding on to something as tightly as Hope is holding on to her business, her identity, her life.
Elizabeth Banks: I was sent the script really early on. They pulled financing together based on me being a part of the project. Really early on, I met with Austin, the director, and watched his documentary. He’d never made a feature film before, a narrative feature, and so I was really moved by his documentary. It’s about Diplo doing a concert, and it’s really moving, and I love supporting new voices in Hollywood. It’s something, as a producer, I’m constantly looking for.
I felt like they really nailed it in terms of the milieu of this, the sense of noir. I felt like the time period that they were exploring, 2013, 2014, I didn’t think about it until I was really exploring it. It was the beginning of Instagram as a marketplace. That’s how you sold things. It wasn’t just share pictures with grandma anymore. It really was how marketing works, and it was about your image and what you projected to the world, and was that appealing to people? And then all of the internet scams that were happening.
There were so many internet scams happening that I just thought, “Oh my gosh. I know people that are getting taken in by this.” And so that appealed to me. And then just the idea of somebody who just doesn’t understand technology. One of the very early scenes when she gets hacked and is like, “How does this happen?” We were joking that her password is probably her initials and 1-2-3-4. I don’t think she realized what needed to be protected in her world. There are just so many things that appeal to me about it.
Banks Recruited Former Co-Star Nathan Fillion For Skincare
You just touched on this, but image is obviously a huge theme of the film. Can you talk about how Skincare addresses our relationship with image and putting on an appearance of success?
Elizabeth Banks: Isn’t that so relatable when you think about what social media is doing to us? It’s all about the presentation. There’s very little reality. I think that this woman wears a lot of armor, already, in life. This character, Hope Goldman, has built everything herself. She’s a divorcee. She is alone in the world. I love that vulnerability of her. Other than her assistant, who she pays to be around her, she has no one and nothing except this business. It’s her entire identity.
And so when it is threatened by people who are new, fresher, younger, doing it better than her, she’s holding on for dear life, and I think she’s going on a ride that she doesn’t anticipate is going to happen to her, and she doesn’t know how to handle it. And then she’s taken advantage of by the youth around her, who do know what they’re doing. And I think that’s also something very relatable right now. It’s relatable to me. What is the movie business? What’s happening? What’s AI doing? Where is this headed?
I think we’re all struggling with that right now. The world, and technology, especially, is moving so fast right now. Everybody is wondering, what is the future of wo
rk and life? Where should we be putting our energy, and what needs to be done to preserve the thing that we have built? And will she ever be able to let it go? I imagined Hope Goldman is going to die as an aesthetician, old and cragley and won’t let it go. And the reason she can’t let go is she has nothing else.
You have an incredibly talented cast of actors onboard, including Nathan Fillion. What did he bring to this project?
Elizabeth Banks: Nathan and I have been friends since we made Slither together. It’s been 20 years or something. We’re old, old friends. I was able to bring him and Luis Gerardo Méndez and Ella Balinska into the movie. I just thought everyone was perfectly cast. I love that I was able to make a film with my friends. Nathan and I love working together. Honestly, it was hard to keep a straight face around him. We spent a lot of time laughing.
I absolutely love the scenes we do together. To me, it spoke to another theme in the film, which is that women have so few avenues to power, and their beauty and their youth and their sexuality is certainly one of them, especially in 2013, 2014, before we had an entire movement about this. I think that Hope Goldman is someone who very old school understood that that was a little bit of the power she could wield. I love that we injected it into the film as something that she uses to bring people in that she needs. It’s just an interesting thematic in the movie, and Nathan was super game as always.
About Skincare
Famed aesthetician Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) is about to take her career to the next level by launching her very own skincare line, but her personal and work lives are challenged when rival facialist Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a new skincare boutique directly across from her store. She starts to suspect that someone is trying to sabotage her reputation and business, and together with her new friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman) she embarks on a mission to unravel the mystery of who is trying to destroy her life.
Check back soon for our other interviews with the Skincare cast:
Lewis Pullman
Luis Gerardo Méndez
