inside 1199’s paris after party

jacket. FANCì CLUB
skirt. PALOMA WOOL
earrings. MOULE JEWELRY

Beyond the crazy, there is nuance, and Malia Pyles found that nuance in Apple TV’s ‘Cape Fear,’ playing Nevaeh Valentine. A challenge and a privilege, Pyles tapped into something she didn’t know she had, a ferocity, a feral nature, that she couldn’t wait to sink her teeth right into, once she got past taking that uncomfortable step into the unknown. A far cry from the characters she’s used to playing on screen, Nevaeh is the epitome of an unstoppable force that meets an immovable object. She’s a tornado of carnage for the Bowden family, creating chaos in her wake, then swiftly disappearing without a care for the consequences, while others are left to pick up the pieces. Pyles is having an absolute blast with it.

As we continue our chat, we discuss her role in indie film, ‘She’s the He,’ as Sasha, the opposite of Nevaeh, but no less pivotal to her. The ‘Queen of the Weird Girls,’ Pyles dubbed the character, she recounts how formative Sasha was to her, reaffirming her love of acting and being on this journey. It’s the making of the film itself that truly solidified it for her, and so did taking the film to London. Being surrounded by fellow creatives whose love of the craft is catching, creating memories to last a lifetime, and finding herself along the way have all been a tonic for an industry that Pyles herself has described as isolating.

Speaking with Schön! Pyles discusses ‘Cape Fear,’ the dualling personalities of Nevaeh and Sasha, taking an indie film or tour, tapping into your own power, finding yourself through your work, and more.

top. Jean Paul Gaultier
shorts. PRISCAVERA
necklace. PANCONESI
opposite
top. Kiko Kostadinov
boy shorts. GRLFRND
shoes. Mugler
hat. Stylist’s Own
rings. UNOde50

Are you based on the East Coast?

I’m from New York. I just moved to New York a little over a month ago, or maybe it’s nearing two months. I’ve been loving it here. Before that, I was in Los Angeles.

Why did you decide to make the move?

I think it was mostly timing, which is kind of an ambiguous answer. But truly, I kind of was able to look around at my life in Los Angeles, and I loved it so much, and I felt so comfortable in it. I was like, “Okay, maybe it’s time to move,” since I was feeling a little too settled. My family’s there. I have every intention to go back to California at some point, but it felt like a really good time to be in a new place that would inspire me and where I could be expansive.

New York is the city for it. It breeds on creativity. I mean, that’s why people move there, right?

Exactly. I want to go to some good theatre and be a part of some if somebody will let me.

What play would you want to be a part of if you could?

I can’t think of any specific titles I know that are coming down the pipe. I’ve always thought of theatre as a fruitful place to get to use my toolbox. I love the communal aspect. I love the idea of getting down and dirty in a rehearsal for an extended period and then getting to leave it all out there and reinvent myself every night. That energy, that’s something that I’ve been really craving.

I’ve spoken to actors who have done theatre, and they’ve always described it as an exercise. It’s like stretching a muscle, essentially. You’re catering to a new audience show and something new happens every night. It’s a good way to keep you on your toes.

Totally. A lot of the reason I feel like I got into this work is that I do love people. I am so curious about what makes them tick and the response they’ll have to my work. It’s interesting with television, of course — it’s like you work on something, and then you sit with it for a year, and then you give it to the world. Even then, you don’t really get the experience of how people experience it. Or if you do, it’s in some really scary Reddit forum [laughs] that you don’t want to spend too much time in anyway, which is also why I’m banning myself from Reddit.

I’d love to talk about ‘She’s the He.’ I absolutely adored it. You dubbed your character Sasha as the ‘Queen of the Weird Girls.’ I’d love to know where that moniker came from.

I think Siobhan (McCarthy), our director, is brilliant. I think that was written in the script, but it was also something we discussed very early on. She’s not a traditional popular girl. She also exists outside of convention. As she is sitting Ethan (Misha Osherovich) down and explaining the rules of womanhood, she knows those rules backwards and forth, since she’s also broken them herself. We spoke about her maybe having some kind of very rigid mother figure in her life that she had to rebel against. At the end of the day, I think Sasha is that girl I know I have experienced in high school, especially going to an art school where she’s kind of adopting all of the other weird girls or weird nonbinary or queer people.

One of my favourite scenes that happens early in the movie is when she is giving Ethan the makeover, and you can see Ethan having this moment of gender euphoria. Do you remember having a moment of your own when you realized that you were queer? And how did you come to terms with that?

Oh my gosh, this is such a great question. It’s funny because yesterday was New York Pride. I participated in the Dyke March on Saturday. I was asking my friends, “So what was your first pride like? And what did you wear?” I remember mine, I think I was 18. I was still closeted. I was doing the most, I was wearing this sparkly pastel rainbow top and a white leather harness with chains. I was like, “I’m a straight girl.” [laughs] but obviously not. Getting to be in this river of queer people and queer voices and getting to celebrate, I think it’s such an important day of celebration.

For me, it was a moment of, “Wait, everyone here is choosing themselves. Maybe I should do that.” I think there have been a lot of big milestones. Even going all the way back to my first job, where I portrayed Parker Torres in ‘Batwoman’ as gay. My storyline was a lot about self-acceptance. I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, “If you’re preaching this to the nation at large, I think you have to start preaching it to yourself.”

top. Love Thanks
skirt. Susan Fang
opposite
hat. Ruslan Gabisky
top. TAOTTAO

As both Sasha and Nevaeh, you seem to be having a ball. What about these very distinct characters appealed to you? How have each of them pushed and pulled you in different ways?

I shot ‘She’s the He’ the summer before the spring, I booked ‘Cape Fear.’ I think that role was pivotal to me, to be able to walk in the skin of someone like Nevaeh, since there’s an intensity with both of those young women. They’re very different characters. I think being this aspirational, cool girl figure in ‘She’s the He’ and having to walk that truth and be in my confidence and dance and use my body in ways that I’ve never really explored before was incredible.

Since I was a young kid, I didn’t know better, nor was I comfortable in my own skin yet. That was so important to be able to navigate a character like Nevaeh. A lot of those conversations that were happening during ‘She’s the He’ with Siobhan, Misha and the people I was leaning on at the time were hyping me up and getting ready to really embrace someone who does feel very volatile, and very loud in her essence. With Nevaeh, one of the first words that was a jumping off point for me in the character breakdown was ‘feral.’ It was actually written in the audition. That really permitted me to experience the full breadth of the emotional spectrum. I think villains have always been so exciting to me. I sometimes have difficulty categorizing a character as one thing, or as a villain, I guess I have to call it [laughs.] That’s the beautiful thing about a villain, which makes it hard to even dub someone that because they are so deeply complicated.

The dream of any actor is to create somebody who has such a very specific worldview that also doesn’t feel necessarily atypical. That was such a cool undertaking, since it really allowed my process to expand and me to approach the work in different ways. I sat with her for a very long time. I think I booked the job in March, and then we weren’t even using cameras up until June. I had a long time to explore, to figure out her psychology, and that was super exciting for me. I feel so grateful that they trusted me with a role like that, even though I think my work in the past. I think about Minnie from PLL (‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’), and it’s a jump.

How do you separate or compartmentalize these characters? Especially when you sit with them for such a long time. How do you separate yourself from somebody like her once the cameras are off?

This is an interesting question, since, without revealing too much, I’ll come in and I’ll be as chaotic as possible, leave behind a trail of carnage, and then I’ll just disappear. How that functions in a work week is that I’m working one to two days out of the week. Then the rest of the days are about making sure that spring continues to be coiled in a way. It’s so hard to get on set and have to do the most absurd, depraved things ever to Amy Adams if you’re not continuously keeping in motion with the work. That doesn’t necessarily mean sitting in a corner in my apartment, being dark and gloomy.

It looked like watching great movies that I love. I watched ‘The Exorcist,’ or even movies that you wouldn’t think of. I love John Waters films and things that feel slightly left of center, like ‘Polyester.’ I also have to keep my body moving and not become too dormant, since when I have to get on set and do the crazy, ridiculous thing, or do the big laugh, I was able to get there quickly.

I’d love to talk about that scene in the movie theatre with the unhinged laugh because it was equal parts terrifying and hilarious.

It was so much fun. The catharsis of getting to be absolutely unhinged in a public space. That was a really fun day. I read that scene, of course, I’m so familiar with the (Martin) Scorsese and (Robert) De Niro version of it, which I watched front to back probably a hundred times. I knew I’d be watching a kids’ movie, but for some reason, I thought it was going to be one or two kids in the theatre. I came on to set that day, and there was an entire preschool of children there. They weren’t being brought to set until we were basically rolling. We’d have this line of little kids come and shuffle into the theatre, and then I’d have to be an absolute basket case in front of them. But it was so much fun.

top. Kiko Kostadinov
hat. Stylist’s Own
opposite
top. Love Thanks
skirt. Susan Fang
shoes. Stylist’s Own
rings. UNOde50

You’ve said that Vic Brandt and Shiv McCarthy urged you to trust your confidence and femininity, and it’s changed the way that you see yourself and the characters you play. In what way?

I just felt a lot more trust in it, with myself, and with my ability. I put myself in a box and, in some ways, I think probably that was unhealed shame, or feeling like I couldn’t tap into my physical side, or my body. Playing characters like Sasha and like Nevaeh has given me access to myself in a way where I’m allowed to be any woman I want to be. Being a woman of mixed heritage, all of these biases that have been created by the society we live in made me feel, when I was younger, that maybe we weren’t being given chances to play these ferocious women. It made me feel like I could only be one type of girl. That’s been such a liberating thing these last few years, really getting to experience so many different characters, and I want to continue to push myself to people that are intrinsically interesting to me, and also a bit offbeat.

What’s a lesson you’ve learned on these projects that you haven’t learned on any other set?

That’s hard. They just reaffirmed things that I already knew. I had such a beautiful experience, with my cast and my crew on ‘She’s the He,’ and on ‘Cape Fear.’ Doing the work is great, but getting to know some of these artists and these people is even better. I literally saw Lily Collias yesterday. It’s so beautiful to create these communities and get to hold on to these people as long as they’ll let me. Same with ‘She’s the He,’ we got to travel around so much with that film, we did so many festivals across America, and then we even went to London together. It’s an indie film, so those trips weren’t necessarily financially supported by the film itself; it was just something that we all signed up to do, since we love each other, and we wanted to travel around with each other.

How cool is it to go around town with this raucous, rebellious film, and get to do it with your buddies, and get to experience the full beauty of these different places together, and create new memories? That’s been really exciting to me. I want to continue to reinvest in myself, but also to reinvest in the people around me. Emerging voices and collaborators that I want to hold on to for a very, very long time. I want to be 50 years old, looking around me, and being like, “You remember back when we shot that weird thing in our 20s?” I think the industry can be so isolating and incredibly difficult at times, but I just want to be with good people and get to do good work alongside them.

This is the third iteration of ‘Cape Fear’ being put to screen. There’s the Robert Mitchum version from the 1960s, then there’s the 1991 Robert De Niro version. Actually, I guess you could count it as four, since ‘The Simpsons’ did their own twist, too. What were your thoughts reading through the script that first time, and what made it unique?

Right off the bat, when I got the initial audition, it was clear how special the project was. It is so well written, and I think Nick Antosca is a genius. Even from just reading my name, Nevaeh Valentine, he’s created such an incredible web. I was rereading the pilot, since it was the only script I had for a bit of time. I would reread it and find something new, or a little Easter egg, or a thread that I could continue to pull. That’s always the type of script I want to be a part of.

I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into until I booked the role. Even for the callback, we had dummy sides. It was basically the movie theatre scene, but it wasn’t in the movie theatre; it was taking place in a library, and the laugh part of it wasn’t there at all. I had no idea that I’d be paying homage to the ’91 ‘Cape Fear’, or De Niro’s performance, until I booked the job. I remember reading these scenes for the first time, and my mouth was just on the floor. The first feeling that washed over me was fear. I was incredibly intimidated. I wondered how the heck I was going to do this.

It was such a dream, though. I didn’t think that type of laugh was in my toolbox before, so it was exciting to get to find that inside myself. I like to challenge the idea of myself and what I’m able to do. I’m just such a fan of psychological thrillers; they were my first film love in a lot of ways, so getting to be part of a type of show like this has been so exciting, not just as an artist, but as a person who loves consuming media. I watched the show back, and I’m just so thoroughly entertained. I am a fan of some of these performances. I mean, Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, Patrick Olsen, come on!

Nevaeh, and everybody on the show is their own unique brand of crazy. How would you describe her journey in conjunction with everyone else’s? What are her motives?

I feel like the words I continue to come back to are distortion, consumption, and asymmetry. Her relationship with Zach (Joe Anders) and the mutilation of his body, or, as I like to call it, the toe incident, are meant to make him off balance and to make him more in step with her. I think some of it is punishment, but a lot of it feels almost like liberation, in a way, since I think she views the hypocrisy of polite society as deeply warped. I thought a lot about Charles Manson and the Manson family, the way he co-opted religion to manipulate these women, which definitely felt like something that had relevance.

There was a lot to explore with her. I also just had to keep on reminding myself that she is a 16-year-old girl. She’s a very young woman who’s mirroring her father in some ways. She’s not as refined as he; her instincts are not as fine-tuned. She’s a young person. She’s been a dormant volcano for so long, and now she’s exploding with all this energy. I don’t even think she knows how to rein herself in. I would describe her to people in the year between airing, and I would call her ‘my little rat girl.’ I thought a lot about small rodents in this process, since when they’re cornered, they puff up their chest, and they try to be as big as possible. They bare their teeth, and they extend their claws, but at the end of the day, they’re masquerading as the predator, but they’re still prey.

To your point, everybody’s going full throttle. Being in company with these performances, whether it be Javier or Joe, who’s doing such a beautiful and quiet portrayal of Zach’s de-evolution, or regression. It was so inspiring to me and kept me on the path of recommitting to her crazy, and her motivations. I have a hard time with crazy, though, since that’s just actor brain; I have justification for everything.

For her, it seems almost… cathartic, terrorizing this family.

People are going to ream me for saying this, but I do think she’s a very lonely girl, and she’s a very loyal person. She has a huge chasm in her heart that she wants to be filled with love. There’s something about her relationship with Zach — although it is tainted with malice and ill intention — there’s some type of communion that happens between them that feels larger than just a bad girl doing crazy shit. Her devotion to her goals is almost monastic in a way. She truly has sacrificed her young life to do this one thing. Having a companion in that, whether it be Zach or Natalie or her father, that keeps her at arm’s length, she’s foaming at the mouth to have true companionship with somebody or somebody that can hold her the way that she wants to hold people, and sometimes her holding people feels like her strangling them.

hat. Ruslan Gabisky
top. TAOTTAO
opposite
top. Jean Paul Gaultier
shorts. PRISCAVERA
necklace. PANCONESI

photography. Tatiana Katkova
fashion. Britt Mccamey @ A-Frame Agency
talent. Malia Pyles
casting. Emma Fleming
hair. Yukie Yamasaki using Oribe
make up. Mia Jones @ Forward Artists using MPH Beauty
production. Clara La Rosa
fashion assistants. Eliza Flynn, Olivia Reid + Arianna Sandoval
production assistant. Cassidy Cocke
interview. Dana Reboe

top. Buneko Cashmere Tales
skirt. H&M Studio
shoes. Saint Laurent
earrings. Pianegonda
tights. Wolford

Embodying the character from a beloved animated series is no easy feat, but Miyako makes it look as effortless as Toph’s earthbending. For season two of Netflix’s ‘Avatar: the Last Airbender,’ Miyako takes on the role of Toph Beifong, aka ‘The Blind Bandit,’ aka ‘The Greatest Earthbender in All the World,’ and she does so with a fervour that translates to the screen. It’s a role of a lifetime, and it’s one that she doesn’t intend to squander — a responsibility that she holds dear. Not only a responsibility to fandom, but also the communities that she’s representing on screen. 

The adaptation is not a one-for-one remake, she explains to us. It takes turns, makes bold choices, but keeps the essence of what makes ‘Avatar’ special. A fan of the animated series herself, she knew that bringing this story to fruition would be a challenge, but a worthwhile one. The plus side of having an adaptation like this is getting to experience the story through a new lens, enriching the world we already know and love as fans. But it’s more than just honouring the fandom and the character of Toph; it’s about shedding light on the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community, in addition to the blind and low vision community, too. Putting in the work and meaning it makes all the difference. And Miyako does that and then some.

Chatting with Schön!, Miyako discusses the weight of fandom, what makes their adaptation different from the original, and more.       

top. Samuel Gartner
trousers. Peggy Hartanto
opposite
top. Peggy Hartanto
hat. Uncuffed Leather

Let’s wind the clock back to the audition. What was the time between auditioning and finally finding out you got the role? 

There was a lot of time in between. The thing about auditioning is that you can only control so much; you can only control how good the tape is, especially with the way that we do auditions nowadays. It’s less in person and more taping on a phone against a blank background. Once the performance part is done, you send it off, and you don’t really know what happens to it after that. It’s like putting a letter in the mail. You only know what’s in the letter. You don’t know how or when it’s going to get there.

There was a point where I didn’t hear something after an in-person session. I thought, “Well, that’s it. That means I didn’t get it.” I was getting discouraged about it. Then I was called in to do a session with Gordon (Cormier). I thought, “Okay, one step closer.” Something is comforting in knowing everybody else auditioning is going through the same process as you. You have to trust that you’ve done well enough with the material they’ve given you. Also, for me, a lot of it was putting it out of my head once I was done with it. I feel like I’m one of those people who can get really in my own head about things. I found it more helpful to just think, “It’s out of my hands. It’s out of my hands.” I did the tape. I did everything I could. 

Did you know you were auditioning for ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ right away? Or was it kept a secret? Did they give you a fake scene to read? 

I think it was a bit of both. Jenny Jue, our amazing casting director, and her team put out a little open casting on Instagram. I think it was opening the casting up to people from the blind or low vision communities. She made a little video the other day that’s up on her profile, about the entire casting process. My tapes all the way up until the final thing.

I knew I was auditioning for Toph, and I got the audition from Instagram, but they did give us dummy scenes. We knew who we were auditioning for, but we were also baseball prodigies in the scene. We were training a kid named Sam who was supposed to be Aang. In the scenes for the audition, I remember the character not being listed as blind or low vision. So, part of it was discerning what to do with the script, because it’s difficult, when you know which character you’re going out for, you know what the actual gist of it is. Then, you get a completely different dummy scene. Do I act like I know what character I’m supposed to be playing, or do I just go with the dummy scene? I think I did a take of both. 

jacket + skirt. Peggy Hartanto
shoes. Stuart Weitzman
jewellery. Pianegonda
opposite
jacket. Peggy Hartanto
trousers. H&M Studio

You mentioned that you read a scene with Gordon as well. What scene did you read? 

By the time that I read with him, I think it was the last round of the audition process. Producers and the executives were very real with us about what we were doing. We read the scene in the Beifong Courtyard where Toph is talking about the badger moles. That monologue, we went through three or four times in one session. But when we got to set to film that scene, we were both like, “When will we be done with this? This scene is going to take forever.” 

And then finding out that you got the role, where were you? Who did you tell? 

I was in my home at the time; I was told that I was being asked to do a stunt fitness test on Zoom. I was told that I was going to meet with our casting director to make sure that I could do the stunts. I was in workout gear because I was like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What are they going to make me do on a Zoom? They’ve seen that I have limbs, they know that I have a body. So, what’s going on?” And Christine Boylan, our executive producer and showrunner, was on the call and said she’d walk me through what’s going on.

I said, “You’re going to walk you through a stunt?” I was confused. I think the whole time, once she started talking, I was getting the idea. In my head, I was like, “Oh, I know what this is. Wait, if I know what this is, does that mean I’m booking it?” I think immediately after it happened, I laid on the ground for 30 minutes because I was overcome with so many things. For me, this has been a long-awaited fan casting and has now turned into a real casting.

I almost needed everybody to stop for a couple of minutes. I immediately told my immediate family. I was very careful about who I told. I will say, I’m pretty sure Gordon actually spoiled it for me before I got that call. I do remember talking to him. I think we both are on Snapchat. It was either him or his dad who sent me a video or a voice note. He was saying, I have to be patient about it. But the tone in his voice, I was like, “What is going on right?” And then maybe an hour later, I got it. I think he was excited about it to the point where he almost couldn’t contain it. He knew he couldn’t tell me. But he wanted to so badly. He kept saying, “I don’t know, Miyako, you just gotta wait.” I was like, “You’re being weird.”

It sounds to me that he was almost bursting at the seams to tell you. I love that. I’d like to touch on Toph herself. She is a beloved fan-favourite from the animated series. I know that you were a fan of the animated series growing up as well. What did you love about her, and how did you go about making her yours?

I feel like there are so many things to love about her. I really loved her spunk. As a kid, I was always called very sassy. Just generally speaking, I was very sassy. I was always bossy, to be honest, especially as a child. I was very bossy. But one of my favourite traits is her self-assuredness and the way she stands fully in herself. She learns to bend in terms of her stance on things. She learns to be more of a team player throughout the series. With any adaptation, the concern is always how one for one are we going to be? We always went into it knowing we were an adaptation. We’re inspired, but we’re like a remix.

I think for me, I just spent a lot of pre-production time analyzing Toph as a character with our acting coach, Sarah Arrington. We basically broke her down in terms of what she is at her core. I already decided to keep a lot of her traits. The biggest thing that I made a choice to make my own was her voice, because Michaela Jo Murphy, who voiced Toph in the original, had laid down such an iconic way that she speaks. I knew that was going to be something as a fan; I wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear someone emulate them. Our version of Toph is slightly older, and Gordon had a huge growth spurt, so for us, it was finding a place where her voice, the way she speaks, and the intonations and the tone, could kind of mix with mine. I tried to keep as close to the original as possible, while also mixing it with my voice.

top. Lalo Cardigans
earrings. Noritamy

One of my favourite lines is when she calls the Boulder the Pebble, and you delivered it perfectly. You spent six weeks in ‘Toph training camp.’ How did that challenge you, since we’re talking about breaking down to the bare bones? What did those six weeks look like?

The first person I met with was Sarah, our acting coach. Then I met with Joe Stretchay and his assistant. He was our blindness consultant on the show. He’s done many other shows, such as ‘Daredevil’ and ‘All the Light We Cannot See.’ I went into it unsure because I’m not blind. I don’t know what it’s like to be blind. So, for me to go into a character that has such an intimate experience with that community, I was nervous about portraying it accurately, but also respectfully. How do I talk about it afterwards? It’s going to be a huge point of discussion.

He was such a trooper. He came in every day on set. He was at every step of rehearsal. He was there for anything I could possibly need. I learned so much. He was really focused on giving me an education rather than just training me for the role, which allowed me to really take his teachings and sprinkle them in. By the end of the season, and by the end of both seasons two and three, I was so confident to the point where there were things that Toph just did that were a part of her daily routine, and that I thought were interesting to emulate. I tried my best to put them in as much as possible.

What also came from those six weeks was us going into stunts. I previously hadn’t done too many of my own stunts, since, for a while, I was a kid, so I couldn’t really do that. But I remember going into the first rehearsal I had, I was trained by one of our amazing stunt coordinators, and I said, “I’m going to be barefoot.” I’ve already decided that for the show, I will be barefoot as many times as possible. I went into stunt training every day and was not wearing socks or shoes. Joe was also there.

We spent the most time learning the boulder fight choreography, which was our biggest choreography at the time, learning the basic stances of what they’ve determined earthbending to be, and specifically, Toph’s fighting style, which I believe is classified as southern praying mantis.
She has her own very unique fighting style that stems from the earthbending that they’ve taught the other characters. We spent a lot of time just learning basic forms and learning the general hand shapes that make it earthbending. So that way, by the time we got into filming more, we could come up with choreography or smaller things.

They made feet for you as well. How many of those did you go through while training?

Oh, I only wore one. They only made one pair. I have ridiculously small feet. I say that, but I’m a size three in kid’s shoes. I can barely wear women’s shoes. We used one pair throughout the entire season. I think we had doubles because we have two units on our show, one for main filming and then some for stunts. But I never wore them if I had the option, since there are some locations in Vancouver where we’re out there in the mud, and it’s not safe for me not to be wearing shoes.

But even for the scene in episode five, where I’m holding up the library, it had snowed a couple of nights before that scene. So, our director, Amit Gupta, was like, “Please wear your shoe things.” Our costume department was very adamant. It is freezing cold. Vancouver cold is no joke. Then we started filming the actual scene. Part of it was going to be focused on the feet. I was like, “Can I take these things off and I’ll just do it for one take?” I don’t want these crazy things on camera. They were thick, too. Genuinely, I think they made my feet probably two or three sizes bigger than they are.

That sounds so uncomfortable!

They were silicone. They’re jelly-like. When I say I’ve never felt anything like this, I mean, I have never felt anything like this. When I was standing on the floor, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me. As a principle, of that character, being barefoot, genuinely, helped me a lot. Especially in the beginning, I had the acceptably blocked vision and whatnot. It honestly really helped me get into character and ground me in a space. No pun intended. So, when I wore those feet, they were so strange.

top + trousers. Peggy Hartanto
shoes. Jimmy Choo
hat. Uncuffed Leather
opposite
jacket. Peggy Hartanto

You’ve spoken before about the weight of playing Toph. What does that responsibility mean to you?

To me, it was about representing the communities that I was representing on screen. My AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community, my people, but also the community of Blindness and Low Vision, who I have immense respect for. Portraying a character, as you said, that’s so iconic, and portraying her accurately while giving her a new spin at the same time is a responsibility I took seriously, since our adaptation is not one for one.

It is a little bit of a remix in certain ways. There are situations and scenes that you don’t see Toph in, in the animated series, that she is a part of in our series. It felt like, “How do I do this respectfully to the communities I’m a part of, but also truthfully to the fans?” And, “How do I, for me, show up to work every day and do work that I am proud of?” It was a mix of all three of those facets.

You’ve mentioned multiple times that the series is not one for one of the animation, but that’s one of my favourite things about it. We’re getting more depth, more insight into these characters with additional scenes. A couple of my favourites were Toph and Sokka at the Poetry Slam. That took me clean out, but it was also a wonderful moment between those two. And then Toph and Uncle Iroh have their heart-to-heart in the tea shop, whereas in the animated series, they meet on the road. Do you have a favourite additional scene?

I am a big fan of the way they’ve done the Spirit Library. Mind you, I will say, I had a logistics issue. I remember going to our writer, Gabe Llanas, and saying, “So explain this to me,” since, as we know, Toph needs her bending to see. In the original series, she doesn’t go into the library, she doesn’t need to. Once we figured it out, it was an interesting and important scenario to see her in, especially her talk with Kiyoshi. That was fun. Putting her in a new environment and giving her a whole new perspective when she holds up the library, I feel like it was a strong move with the writing.

With Iroh and the teashop, it was interesting to have it post the village fight, which means that Toph has already met Iroh. She knows it’s him because of his vibrational signature, and he knows because he’s seen her. One thing that we spent a lot of time on is that they both chose to be strangers at that moment, whether for themselves or for each other. They choose to take each other in just for their story, and just for what they’re telling each other in that moment, which I think is philosophical. It adds a slightly more thoughtful emotional level. It feels more poignant to me. I love that they know exactly who they are, but they’re choosing to be in this moment. They’re actively deciding to see each other as human beings as opposed to enemies. You’ve met with Michaela (Jill Murphy) a few times before.

You’ve both brought your own flavour to the character. When you two first met, what did those conversations look like?

Michaela is lovely. I think that she, like me, is just a real artist. She wants the work that she did to mean something to other people, to be important. With the adaptation and the live-action series, she showed nothing but support for. The first thing she did when my casting was announced was show people how to pronounce my name. She introduced me as the new Toph, and I hadn’t even met her yet. So, when I saw the video, I was like, “Holy shit, what the hell is going on?” Then I met her. We were both at a convention.

I saw her interact with fans. We went to dinner afterward with her and Zach (Tyler Eisen), who voices Aang in the animated series, and Gordon. She was just so sweet. She and I text all the time. She’s a real girl at heart. She’s just a genuinely good person. She just wants people to be impacted by either what she’s done or things that are associated with her. Those early conversations had nothing to do with the show at first, but more about getting to know her as a person.

Lastly, what has been the most rewarding thing about bringing Toph Beifong to life?

I feel like the fan response is always something that I can’t quantify. We have new gen fans who are seeing our version of the show before they even see the animated series. The response to Toph, to the character, to the way we went about her for all her flaws and everything else has been immensely positive. I have people messaging me and commenting everywhere that they appreciate my performance.

The communities I represent have been very positive. I’ve been doing some work with Joe. We went to Wayfinder Family Services, which is an institute and educational facility as well as a living facility for people of the blind and low vision community, but also the disability community in general. I’ve been loving getting to get into the real work, which is the work I do as me, as myself, where I don’t get to play around in a costume for 14 hours. Now I get to go out as me and have a real impact in the world. I feel like it’s been very exciting.

I think I’ve learned a lot from playing her. I grew so much as a person, just throughout the experience of being in her shoes, on a daily basis. Or not, not shoes. She doesn’t wear those, but, she’s helped me open up a lot of things in my head and in my heart.

top + skirt. Lalo Cardigans
opposite
top. Samuel Gartner

photography. Kiu Kayee
fashion. Monica Murillo
talent. Miyako
hair. Remy Moore for The Only Agency using Bumble and Bumble
make up. Akina Shimizu represented by A-Frame Agency
production. Cassidy Cocke
photography assistant. Valentina Berti
interview. Dana Reboe

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Gender parity has been a hot topic in festival lineups for years, and while Mad Cool festival already has a long history of championing female talent, its 2026 edition took it a step further. Matching efforts from other promoters, like Primavera Sound’s notable all-female headlining trio in 2025 or Olivia Rodrigo‘s recently announced all-female nonprofit music festival, Daisy Chain Fields, Mad Cool let women take the reins for the second day of the festival.

Irish pop-country star CMAT was in charge of warming up the crowd as the first act of the night on the Orange stage, putting on a pared-down show with her crew, all clad in skirts, that was a perfect mix of humour and vocal prowess. CMAT, an acronym for the artist’s name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, was a splendid display of irreverence with crowd interactions galore. The summer heat didn’t stop her dancing and jumping. She even shouted out Olivia Rodrigo before “When a Good Man Cries”, in reference to her cover of the track. 

Wunderkind Reneé Rapp took on the main Region of Madrid stage to a legion of fans. She closed with viral hit tracks like “In The Kitchen”, “Tummy Hurts” and  “Snow Angel” before ending on a cheeky note with “At Least I’m Hot,” off her 2025 album “Bite Me.” As the sun began to set, New Zealand pop royalty, Lorde, put on an experimental and raw show using EKG electrodes that monitored her cardiac vitals as part of her visuals. The 29-year-old performed songs like “Royals”, “Team”, and “Ribs” from her debut album “Pure Heroine”, as well as standouts from her latest album, “Virgin”, before ending with her feature on the remix of Charli xcx‘s “Girl, so confusing.” 

One of the most anticipated acts of the night was Swedish pop princess Zara Larsson. She brought her technicolour world of dolphins and hibiscus flowers to the Spanish capital. Making her grand return to Mad Cool after four years, Larsson arguably deserved a bigger stage than Orange’s second in command. She kept the energy positive and bright with tracks like “Symphony,” “Lush Life” and, of course, “Midnight Sun” (twice) as the sun began to set. Larsson definitely takes the home run for best live arrangements, interpolating elements from other remixes and songs, like “Looking for the Hoes” by Sexyy Red and the seminal “Tokyo Drift” by Teriyaki Boyz.

 Jennie, who rose to fame as a member of BLACKPINK, turned up the heat during her first solo appearance in Spain. Jennie’s stage was theatrical with Euphoria-esque hazy visuals custom-made for each song. The star sang three unreleased songs and delighted fans with live renditions of standouts like Tame Impala collaboration “Dracula”, The Idol‘s “One of the Girls”, originally with The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp, as well as the vast majority of her first solo album “Ruby.” Marking her return to the festival since 2022, the honour of closing the day went to Florence + The Machine. The show was akin to a religious experience, with leading lady Florence Welch gracing the stage barefoot in a flowy dress to perform from her new album Everybody Scream and career-defining tracks like “Dog Days Are Over” and the Candi Staton cover “You Got the Love.” 

While women stole the show on Thursday, that’s not to say there was a shortage of male talent. Teddy Swims and Charlie Puth also drew massive crowds and the festival lineup featured standouts like Foo Fighters, Moby, Kings of Leon, and more. However, dedicating a full day to spotlighting female talent was a bold move that paid off. Truly, the only worry for attendees was keeping heatstroke at bay, as CMAT joked during her set, and manoeuvring around the small but pesky schedule overlaps here and there. Every year, Mad Cool tries to reinvent itself with new stage configurations, new acts, and a broader scope. A decade in, the formula seems to be working better than ever.

photography. Javier Bragado + Luis Carbonell
words. Sara Delgado