Interview: Skincare Director Austin Peters on Making Elizabeth Banks Thriller ‘a Ride’

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Skincare director Austin Peters. Peters discussed the film’s tone, working with Elizabeth Banks, and more. The IFC Films thriller is now playing exclusively in theaters.

“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 friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman), she embarks on a mission to unravel the mystery of who is trying to destroy her life,” says the synopsis for the movie directed by Austin Peters.

Tyler Treese: Skincare is a thriller, but the film has such fun energy. How was it coming up with the vibe of the film? You really capture LA well.

Austin Peters: I think we always, from the beginning, said that the film was a thriller. That decision was our north star of guiding these creative decisions was make sure it was exciting first and foremost. Then after that, sort of letting the comedy come through and letting the ridiculousness of the situation come through. But trying to never let it overtake the severity of the situation as it escalates. So that was something that we just calibrated throughout the process, every step of the way, in writing, in shooting, and then really in the edit, too, because we just had so many great choices from this cast.

Since this is inspired by true events, and when I was looking up the real story, it’s just as wild as the movie, and there are unreliable narrators. How was it trying to crack the nut and find a story here? There are so many different directions and focuses you can go with this, and you found a very interesting one here — a character study of Elizabeth Banks’ character.

Well, I think that the movie’s really a work of fiction, first and foremost, so we were liberated early on by the idea of not trying to tell any story or be true to any events that have taken place in the past. We really wanted to use this idea, this sort of headline as the point of departure, and then create our own story that felt like the most engaging movie in the movies and the books that we were really inspired by. So, that was kind of the way that we approached the story, just letting it be all new characters created by the writers and the cast members and letting them sort of make these characters and bring them to life. Then seeing sort of what they did once they started walking around.

One thing I really love about Elizabeth’s character is that she’s very much kind of that control freak that has to be projecting that she’s in control at all times, but we’re viewing her at this moment in her life where she just has absolutely no control. So what was most interesting about really capturing that dichotomy between what she wants and where she actually is in life?

Yeah, I think that you nailed it with her character. She’s someone who really is obsessed with control and obsessed with control in every situation, even when she’s pretending that she’s not. I think that that’s sort of what makes watching her lose control so delicious because she’s grasping so hard for it even when things are spinning out, she still is grasping and trying new things. I think that that was a really exciting character for us to explore. That was something that I think Elizabeth was attracted to from the beginning was just how this woman controls the situation in every room she walks into. So as things go on and they go more off the rails, I think that that’s sort of tension between the chaos and the control really is what makes the sparks fly.

As funny as Elizabeth can be, this is a drama, and she really gets to act throughout this. It’s great seeing her have such a juicy role. What really made her stand out as such a great choice to the topline this film? It was perfect casting.

She was someone who we envisioned in this role from the beginning. And, and when we sent her the script, we thought that it was a long shot and that she would, we would never hear back even, and so when she wanted to jump on a Zoom and, and talk to me about it, it was really exciting because it was, it was just such an incredible realization of the character and, and of the story. I think what I’ve always loved about Elizabeth and why she is one of my favorite actors is because she is so fearless and because she’s so transformative and because she is unafraid to go there and also become someone else and become something else, and, and because she’s able to oscillate so effortlessly between humor and drama, and this felt like as I was reading the script, that’s who I wanted to watch, that’s who I was imagining. And so as a fan, this is kind of the movie that I wanted to see Elizabeth Banks in, and I was just also very lucky, lucky enough to be able to direct it as well.

You’ve uh, done a lot of music videos in the past, commercials, and you did a really good documentary, but this is your first narrative feature. When you have a lead actress that is also a director, how helpful is that to just have somebody that fully knows where you’ve been before and somebody you can really bounce ideas off of too?

It was invaluable to be able to work with her who, in addition to being one of the best actors that there is out there is also an incredible director and an incredible producer. Having her being the center of the movie was something that allowed us to make it happen because she was not the center just in the story in terms of her performances, but also because she was on set every day from beginning to end. She’s in every single scene. Her energy set the tone for everyone, for the crew, for the cast, for everyone. When you see someone like her, who’s achieved so much and is so successful, working as hard as she is and delivering the way that she’s delivering it makes everybody want to be on their A-game, including me.

How has that transition been from music videos? A lot of great directors have gotten their start there and in commercials. So, what were the biggest lessons that really you learned during your time doing music videos that were applicable to Skincare?

I think it’s sort of boring, but what’s fun about music videos is that you kind of learn how to make your day. You sort of like learn that you only have this amount of time and the artist might be late or something else might happen, and you have to pivot there and you still have to deliver something that feels like a premium image. You still have to deliver something that feels like it has a high production value, even though your day might’ve been cut in half, or even though you might’ve lost your permit or you might’ve never had a permit at all. All these kind of things. These sort of challenges that you face on music videos that are part of the part of the day-to-day action of it also just ends with you have to make your day, you have to walk off set with a video, and if you don’t, you’re f—ed.

There’s very rarely reshoot. There’s very rarely anything like that. So in a weird way, that sort of lesson is really helpful in an independent film where you’re working with such an amazing cast like we did that are all shooting other stuff, and whose schedules are packed for the next year at least. You sort of have to be guaranteed that we walk away from these 18 days with the film and that it’s something that you can stand behind in terms of the images that you’ve created. So that was probably one of the most important lessons that I took from that.

You mentioned really finding some of the film within the edit and determining the tone because you had so much to work with. The length of this is 94 minutes. That’s like the perfect length. You nailed it. I love that. How was it forming the film in the edit?

That was always the goal. The goal was always to make this as short as possible and really just make it so make it fast, you know? So it feels like a ride and it feels like a good time when you watch this movie. You go on a ride in the theater. I was very lucky to work with Laura Zempel as my editor, who is an incredible talent. It was several weeks of just her and I in her backhouse editing this movie with her pit bull. It was watching it over and over and over again and having the producers come in and watch it and see where we could cut. We just knew that we wanted it to be fast. We looked at our first cut actually the other day, or we looked at a photo from when we showed the first cut to the producers, and it was an hour and 45 minutes, which I think Laura was really happy about. So things came out and things went back in, but it was important for us that it was fast and it was exciting.

You have a really excellent performance from Lewis Pullman in this. He really went down the rabbit hole watching the YouTube and all these grifter life coaches, which is really fun. How was it working with Lewis and coming up with that character? He’s a delight.

Yeah, I think Lewis is a genius, and I think he’s just such an incredible actor. He did so much work to build this character, and we were just sort of on FaceTime all the time when he was in his hotel after shooting Outer Range or whatnot. He was sort of recording videos of himself doing self-help and sending them to me, experimenting with the voice, and looking at those interviews that he told you about as you mentioned. He was sending me those clips, and he was like, “I like how he says this. I like how he’s sort of gentle about it, but it also feels like kind of forceful at the same time.” So finding that sort of tonality in the way he spoke, I think was really exciting. We sort of worked a lot on calibrating the level of an airhead that he was, how much of an airhead he could be in different scenes, and how that could be endearing while still wanting to listen to his advice about what you should do with your life and self-defense.

We have some familiar faces for fans of Elizabeth Banks on this cast. Nathan Fillon, she’s starred with before, and she directed Luis Gerardo Méndez before. Were those just happy accidents, or did she help get you in touch with some of these actors?

Yeah, I mean, like I said, Elizabeth was the first and most important piece of the movie, and we knew that we couldn’t do anything until we cast Hope Goldman. So when she came on, suddenly people understood the movie better. Oh, it’s Elizabeth Banks playing this part, and then you can sort of see it, you know? I think what their relationships ended up really helping was not so much casting them in the project because they still have to like the script, and they still have to want to play the character, and they still have to believe that it’s worth their time, you know?

But I think where it really was amazingly beneficial is the fact that she had this shorthand with Nathan, who she’s known for so many years, and they have this very old friendship that that’s able for them to immediately click into it. They’re having so much fun when they’re playing those scenes together. It’s so much fun to watch them play those scenes together.

It’s the same thing with Luis, where they had this great relationship from Charlie’s Angels and from Ella Balinska, who also was in Charlie’s Angels, obviously. So, Ella’s first day on the shoot was the scene when Hope runs in, screams at Ella, calls her a traitor, says all kinds of rude things at her, and screams at Angel. For an actor, I think that can be really hard to come in, and that’s the first scene you shoot where you step into the space, and Elizabeth Banks is screaming at you.

That’s a really challenging thing for anyone to step into as a performer, but because Elizabeth and Luis were all such good friends from doing Charlie’s Angels, they just immediately snapped into it and were having so much fun and also pushing the scene into this like weird and intense and funny and uncomfortable place really instantly because they were just ready to go there because they had this comfortability with each other from their relationship beforehand. So I think that that was super helpful for sure.

Thanks to Austin Peters for taking the time to talk about Skincare.

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