Mychala Lee is a star on the rise. The 'Finish of the Highway' actress spoke EXCLUSIVELY with HL about working and studying from Queen Latifah, her character's 'actuality test,' and enduring the 'intense' shoot.
Netflix’s newest new movie is the action-packed Finish of the Highway, starring Queen Latifah, Ludacris, and Mychala Lee. Mychala performs Kelly, Queen Latifah’s daughter, who will get caught up within the battle for her life when a cross-country highway journey takes a darkish flip. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Mychala about her newest challenge.
“I used to be actually drawn to my character Kelly as a result of she is the entire issues that I used to be missing at the moment. She’s daring. She’s outspoken. She is fierce. She’s courageous. I used to be actually in a position to faucet into these components of myself via her evolution within the film,” Mychala stated.
Queen Latifah performs Mychala’s onscreen mother, and Mychala had a lot reward for the Hollywood icon. “She’s wonderful. I can not categorical how heat and alluring her power is,” Mychala famous. “She was so welcoming. No ego in any respect. She’s so humble and so variety and simply having the ability to sort of have her as a mentor and a pal and a motherly determine was actually, actually particular.”
The 19-year-old revealed that the “major factor” she realized from Queen Latifah was that “kindness will take you additional than anything. Somebody of that standing and that repertoire, she might simply simply go about her job, get out and in, and never fear about something. However she actually took her time to make everybody really feel liked, really feel welcome, really feel secure, particularly as an govt producer on the movie. She had that additional degree of management to be sure that it was a enjoyable, welcoming atmosphere. I believe that was my largest takeaway, to only be variety to everybody that you simply’re with.”
Ludacris additionally joins the highway journey as Queen Latifah’s brother. Mychala admitted that the Quick & Livid star was the supply of many laughs on set. “There are such a lot of unwritten jokes that he threw within the film that you simply’ll in all probability crack up. He’s a lot enjoyable,” Mychala stated. “He actually felt like an older brother or like that goofy uncle. We've got so many inside jokes from set. Truthfully, it was a household from the second we met.”
She added, “We had been always enjoying music, always dancing and singing. It’s truly humorous as a result of Cris and Latifah had been very impressed by my music information of 2000s R&B.”
The Netflix film was filmed in and round Sante Price and Albuquerque. “It was intense. We had been within the New Mexico warmth. Sandstorms, thunderstorms, flooding, we skilled all of it,” the actress revealed. “It was positively a grueling summer time bodily simply coping with the warmth and the weather and stuff.”
Over the course of the movie, Mychala famous that her character is “positively given a actuality test. She is coping with teenager issues, splitting together with her boyfriend, and leaving all of her associates at residence. After which hastily, she is thrown into this actual world, excessive stakes, chaotic problem. She is basically given a perspective of what’s vital and what she must worth.”
Mychala may also be returning for the upcoming third season of Reality Be Advised. “It's one other loopy wild trip in season 3,” Mychala teased. “She was launched final season as Trini Killebrew, however this season, she performs an enormous driving power within the narrative of the story. It offers with some actually related occasions which can be related to this point in time. It’s an vital story, but it surely’s additionally extraordinarily surprising and thrilling.”
On prime of performing, Mychala can also be devoted to her schooling. She graduated from Cal State College, Northridge, with a level in household research. “My plan is to hopefully possibly someday get my grasp’s in baby psychology as a result of that’s positively an enormous ardour of mine and an enormous want I really feel like in my neighborhood as a Black girl and in addition simply in our day and age proper now,” Mychala informed HollywoodLife. “Youngsters, particularly going via this pandemic, not being in class, there’s numerous struggles and new points which can be developing. It’s one thing that I’m actually keen about, and I’m so glad that I went and I completed. It additionally correlates with performing much more than I assumed it might. I studied numerous psychology, numerous household relations, how folks perform in relationships, so once I get a personality, I can sort of see from it a psychological level as properly.” Finish of the Highway is now streaming on Netflix.