Interview: Emma Roberts & Poppy Liu Talk Space Cadet

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Space Cadet stars Emma Roberts and Poppy Liu about the upcoming Prime Video comedy movie. The actresses spoke about some of the film’s most entertaining scenes and working with writer-director Liz W. Garcia. The film will premiere globally on Prime Video on July 4.

“Tiffany ‘Rex’ Simpson (Emma Roberts) has always dreamed of going to space, but life isn’t going quite as planned. Determined to turn things around, she aims high, and with the embellishing touch of her supportive best friend Nadine (Poppy Liu), her ‘doctored’ application lands her in NASA’s ultra-competitive astronaut training program. In over her head, Rex relies on her quick wits, moxie, and determination to get to the top of her class,” says the synopsis. “NASA program directors Pam (Gabrielle Union) and Logan (Tom Hopper) certainly take notice, but can this Florida girl get through training and into the cosmos before she blows her cover? Written and directed by Liz W. Garcia (Purple Hearts), Space Cadet is a comedy about the power of being yourself, following your dreams, and shooting for the stars.”

Tyler Treese: Emma, Space Cadet has such a fun tone to it. It’s nice to have this really breezy movie that’s filled with laughs and then it has this really life-affirming message to it on top of it. What did you like most about just the film’s overall vibe?

Emma Roberts: I loved the script. I mean, even just the title Space Cadet, I knew I was gonna love it, and I read it, and I found myself just smiling and laughing. I devoured it in one sitting and it just felt like a movie I really wanted to be a part of. There was, you know, nostalgia there, but also so much like originality. And at the end of the day, it’s uplifting. It’s a movie, you know, you can watch with your siblings or your parents or your significant other or whoever and just like, have a nice time. And I just feel like there’s not a lot out there like that. Um, and so I was really excited to be, to be a part of that.

Poppy, after the beginning of the film, most of your scenes are phone calls. It really impressed me because a lot of the time in movies, these phone call scenes are just exposition, and they don’t always hold your attention, but you managed to make every single one of these phone calls entertaining and fun to watch. What’s the secret there? Because you did such a great job in these very difficult scenes.

Poppy Liu: Oh, thank you, Tyler. It’s a really fun script, honestly. I feel like a lot of, a lot of what we do as actors, like 80% of the work is the script. If it’s a great script, we just do what we need to do for the scene, and it’s great. So I think that it really comes down to that, like from start to finish, like, yeah, it is, it is so fun.

But for those scenes, Nadine’s such a fun, silly, heart-centered, sweetie-pie character; Everything that she does is out of love. She has such good intentions, and I think that’s kind of what’s sweet about all of it. Even when she’s being silly, she’s doing it ultimately out of love for her best friend. She was like, “I’m gonna keep my friend in NASA for as long as possible.” So I think just like you, that’s like someone that you wanna root for. It’s great to root for people who are rooting for each other, and Nadine and Rex have a great friendship that I think we all deserve.

Emma, I found out that we have similar workout habits in this film. We both sing Carly Rae Jepsen on the treadmill. How was it filming that scene? That is such a highlight.

Roberts: I mean, that was actually hard because I was like, okay, what’s like, what’s the trick here? They’re like, “Well, just pretend to run and sing the song, and then someone falls.” And I’m like, “Oh.” I definitely thought there was gonna be more of like a stunt involved, but we were all just kind of like pretending to run. We had these weighted vests on too, which I remember being like, oh, okay. That was when we saw the stunt double fly off the treadmill every time. I mean, it’s so jarring to see.

But that song, I remember the first time I heard “Call Me Maybe,” I was in the back of a taxi in New York City with my best friend blasting it on our iPhones. So, yeah. I love that song.

Poppy, Liz Garcia is the director. What really stood out about her approach? Because this is such a fun film.

Liu: The thing that I’ve been sharing that kind of shows who she is as a director is I think she really puts like people first. My character was originally not supposed to be pregnant. I was cast I think a year before we even filmed, got pregnant in the meantime. By the time like we were gonna film, I was seven months pregnant, so I was like, “Maybe they’ll have to recast or whatever.” She was just like, “No. I’ll just rewrite Nadine to be pregnant, done.” And I was like, seriously?

I think she’s really one of a kind for just kind of being. You really feel like she cares about you as a person. She cares about the thing that she’s making. There’s so much heart there, and I think the dynamic on set translates a lot when you watch something. So watching it does feel great because I think we felt great making it.

Thanks to Emma Roberts and Poppy Liu for discussing Prime Video‘s Space Cadet.

Tyler Treese

Tyler Treese is ComingSoon and SuperHeroHype's Editor-in-Chief. An experienced entertainment journalist, his work can be seen at Sherdog, Fanbyte, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. When not watching the latest movies, Treese enjoys mixed martial arts and playing with his Shiba Inu, Kota.