Naomi Scott, known for Smile 2 and the live-action Aladdin, recently discussed her connection to faith, fame, and why she’s decided to reconnect with her original love of singing as her medium of self-expression.
Naomi Scott has been a major Hollywood figure within the past decade. From her role in the live-action Aladdin, to embracing the art of being a true scream queen in horror hit Smile 2, it’s safe to say when Scott is cast in something, audiences are going to line up to see it.
Now, however, she’s reconnecting with her original love of singing and music. In a recent interview with Michael Cragg of the Guardian, Scott discussed how when she was 27, she experienced what she now calls a “quarter-life crisis.”
As someone who’s been acting since she was a teenager and married young, Scott knew she wanted to take some time to reflect on what she truly wanted to do with her future, and how she wanted to express herself. Now, at 32-years-old, she wants to embrace the parts of her life she couldn’t put her energy into due to the hectic schedule of being an actor.
“I felt I had to go back to basics, to a childlike writing process. Just me on the piano at 14, allowing whatever comes naturally to come. So that’s what I did,” she told Cragg when speaking about her relationship with music.
Through this reconnection came Scott’s debut album, F.I.G., which will be released on March 20th. The title stands for Fall Into Grace, Grace is Scott’s middle name and also represents her new sense of exploration that was cultivated when creating the album. Scott also described how “Grace” became an alter-ego for her through her writing process.
“I’ve gone through the whole process of: why do I want to do music? What does it look like in this climate? Where do I fit in?”
Scott initially began working on F.I.G. in 2022, flying between Los Angeles and Norway with producer Lido. During this time Scott was still working as an actor, famously starring in Smile 2, where she ironically played a troubled pop star who was making a comeback to music. Her character, however, was traumatized after the death of her boyfriend and was coping with drug addiction.
“It was the hardest thing I’ll probably have to do, but very rewarding,” Scott said when she talked about the process of playing Riley in Smile 2. Scott’s performance was hailed as one of the most committed and successful horror roles in recent years.
A major part of the character of Riley was that she was being controlled and manufactured when it came to her image and sound as a pop star, something that Scott completely avoided when it came to creating her own music.
“I’ve gone through the whole process of: why do I even want to do music? What does it look like in this climate? Where do I fit in? What are the priorities for me and what does success look like to me? That’s why everything is a little bit more DIY.”
In the video for her recent single Losing You she worked to embrace exactly that point. The visuals look as if it was recorded on a phone’s front-facing camera, and shows Scott wiping her tears with a turtle before shipping herself away inside of a suitcase.
“I think there are some people that want to mold me into different things, but I am very much a girl-in-progress right now. And I wanted all the world around the album to have that feel, too. It’s not super-polished,” she said.
“It takes honing your sound, it takes finding the right collaborators, it takes experience. I can’t just come in the side door and be this [fully fledged pop star], because there’s no substance underneath it.”
As someone who’s been in the entertainment industry for a majority of her life, Scott understands what it means to be in the spotlight, and the intense pressures that it comes with. Which is why when it comes to her music, she doesn’t see herself trying to become “Gaga-level famous,” Cragg wrote.
“The way that we so easily talk about famous people, talk about people as if we know them, as if we know anything about them, creating narratives around them and just completely dehumanizing them,” she explained.
“Imagine you had a camera on you. So now you’re consciously thinking about yourself. Then you hear that everyone was saying stuff about how you were acting, so maybe now you’re doing less. But then they’re like: ‘Oh she’s changed.’ You absolutely cannot win, you know?”
As Scott has grown in her career, her parents were always there for her to keep her grounded and feel like a normal person. Her mom and dad both still work for their local church, and she says “there weren’t these weird expectations on me, which I think a lot of other pastors’ kids have had experiences of.”
Scott’s entrance into the world of professional entertainment also started in the church after she performed Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You” and former Eternal star Kéllé Bryan was in the audience. Bryan immediately signed Scott to her theater agency and from there, she began being cast in commercials.
She eventually auditioned in front of Xenomania’s Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper who wrote hits for Girls Aloud and Sugababes. Scott then began perfecting her songwriting skills during various songwriting camps in Los Angeles. “I learned so much, but I was definitely coming out with this pseudo-experience because the song could be for her, or her, or her …”
Scott then discussed how she got into acting “almost accidentally.” Scott landed a role in the Disney Show Life Bites at 15 and was then cast in the hit TV movie musical Lemonade Mouth. From there she was cast as the Pink Ranger in 2017’s Power Rangers film which really put her on the map in Hollywood. She then was cast by Guy Ritchie as Princess Jasmine in Disney’s live-action Aladdin.
Luckily for Scott, even though Aladdin had huge commercial success, grossing over $1 billion, her level of fame was “kept at bay.”
“I’m so lucky because the people that come up to me are brown girls from the age of 15 to 30. I have the nicest demographic of people. We just chat and it’s the loveliest.”
Now, Scott is looking forward to her future and the release of F.I.G. on March 20th.
“This [F.I.G.] is mine. When you’re acting, you really are like a color in a painting that’s being utilized, whether that’s by the film-maker or the editor. With music, you are the artist yourself, you are the painter.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
