“Iconic.”
That’s how Charli XCX once (accurately) described herself, and it also applies to the Brat tour.
After releasing Brat — which, among other accomplishments, won three Grammys and topped the Uproxx Music Critics Poll — the “360” singer first hit the road with Troye Sivan, and is now winding down the green-album era solo.
I caught the first concert of Charli’s mini-residency at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center this week. All four shows at the spacious 19,000-capacity arena are sold out, an impressive achievement for someone who, the last time I saw her, was in a venue that holds maybe 1,500 people. Charli has always been ambitious enough to be a headliner; now she is one. (“Miss Should Be Headliner” is a funny joke, but there’s truth in comedy, as they say.)
However, Charli finds herself at a crossroads. She’s “reached this new level of success,” as she put it in an interview, and she’s suddenly (and deservedly) popular enough that she can do pretty much whatever she wants. And what she wants to do is act.
A quick look at Charli’s filmography on IMDb shows that she has nine projects in the works. They are:
- The Moment, an A24 film based on her own original idea.
- Overcompensating, a Prime Video college-set comedy series from creator Benito Skinner where she serves as executive music producer and also guest stars as a fictionalized version of herself who hates singing “Boom Clap” (OK, maybe it’s not so fictionalized).
- The Gallerist, the new movie from Birds Of Prey director Cathy Yan about a “desperate gallerist who conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami” that also stars Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega.
- Erupcja, the secret movie she filmed in Poland during Brat summer.
- 100 Nights Of Hero, a “feminist fairy tale inspired by One Thousand And One Nights” with Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, and Nicholas Galitzine.
- I Want Your Sex, an intriguely-titled descent into “sex, obsession, power, betrayal, and murder,” about a fresh-faced youngster (Cooper Hoffman) who becomes the “sexual muse” for a provocative artist (Olivia Wilde).
- Sacrifice, the English-language debut from acclaimed music video director Romain Gavras, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a Joan Of Arc-like zealous spirit who is on a mission to save the world from a fiery reckoning, as well as Chris Evans, John Malkovich, Salma Hayek Pinault, Sam Richardson, and Yung Lean.
- Faces Of Death, a modern update of the cult horror favorite.
- Untitled Takashi Miike Movie, an unlikely but potentially awesome pairing of Charli and the director of Audition, Ichi The Killer, and One Missed Call. There are no plot details yet, but expect the film to be violent.
That’s a lot of movies! (And one TV show!) But after seeing Charli on the Brat tour, I’m more convinced than ever that she can pull it off.
The Brat tour is a (relatively speaking) “simple” production. There’s no dancers, no band, no backup dancers — all eyes are on Charli, all the time. Even when she walks off stage to strut through the scaffolding underneath, there’s a camera operator following her, or circling the singer when she’s gyrating on the floor in one of her party-girl outfits.
There’s a confidence and effortless quality to the way that she interacts with the camera. The proven keys to success apply to both live music and movies: she knows her angles; hits her marks; trusts her collaborators (in this case, the cameraperson); and makes strong, organic choices — like spitting on the floor and licking it up, or dancing in a ripped-up shirt in the rain.
Charli also knows her limitations. Her filmography currently consists of documentaries, concert films, and voice roles in animated kid flicks The Angry Birds Movie and UglyDolls, which is why instead of headlining a four-quadrant blockbuster, she’s starting small.
“I’m enjoying learning about being on a set and learning from great directors and actors,” she told Variety. “I hate it when musicians dive into a different field, head-first, without really researching or learning much of anything about it. So I did a lot of reading to educate myself over the past three or four years before I actually did anything.”
Charli XCX is about to do a lot of things. If the Brat tour and her thoughtfulness are any indication, her acting is going to be, well, iconic.