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'Zombies 4' star Sway Bhatia brought out her alter ego of a sassy vampire for hit Disney movie
Disney's popular Zombies franchise has continued with the success of Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires (streaming on Disney+), with stars including Milo Manheim, Meg Donnelly, Freya Skye, Malachi Barton and Chandler Kinney. But a notable cast member that joined Zombies 4 is the talented Sway Bhatia, who previously played Sophie Roy, daughter to Jeremy Strong's character Kendall, in Succession, in addition starring in The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers.
Bhatia's Zombies 4 character Vera takes to the screen with force. She's sassy, unapologetically her vampire self, and that's something that really appealed to the actor.
"I loved how strong-willed she was and how much being a vampire meant to her," Bhatia told Yahoo. "Especially as a young South Asian woman, I think it's so important to show strong female characters in films. So I'm really grateful that both me and Freya's characters were portrayed as that, even Meg and Chandler and Kylee [Russell] are such strong female characters, and I love how confident and independent they are."
"I hope people can ... relate to everything that we go through and how we deal with our conflicts. But Vera was a lot of fun to play in that way. I've never played a vampire before, so that was very different for me, for sure, but she was a lot of fun. ... I got to bring out my inner, I guess my alter ego of like sassiness and confidence."
Milo Manheim 'predicted' Sway Bhatia's future
But being part of the Zombies franchise is a tall order. There's singing, dancing, and of course in Bhatia's case, the acting challenge of transforming into a vampire.
"You have to fully use your imagination on how this vampire would be in real life," she said. "So I think it's a lot of fun bringing those characters to life."
Bhatia also has a particularly fun moment when she gets to "fang out" with Willa (Chandler Kinney), which is particularly fun to watch.
"Especially for me, being a fan of the franchise, that scene with Chandler was one of the coolest moments for me on set ever," she said. "Watching her in the second and third movie was so cool for me, getting to see a woman of colour on screen just be so powerful and such a strong werewolf."
"So getting to watch her fang out in front of me and then having to fang out back to her was such a cool moment. And it looked really cool with the SFX added, because doing it without it definitely felt a little bit weird. But I had her there to comfort me."
While Bhatia had been a fan of the Zombies films before Zombies 4, Manheim actually predicted her future when she went to the premiere for Prom Pact. When Bhatia met Manheim, he said he would see her in Zombies 4, before the film was even confirmed. Fast forward and the two actors did in fact star alongside each other in the movie.
"That was insane. I still think about that all the time," Bhatia said. "I took it as a complete joke, ... and then a year or two later, when I found out I booked it, he texted me because the casting director gave him my number, and he was like, 'Is it true that I told you you were going to be in Zombies 4?' ... Yes Milo, you predicted my future."
"So I've always kept an eye out for him, because he freaked me out ever since he did that, but I'm so grateful to have him in my life as a friend now."
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Being mentored by 'Succession' cast
Before Zombies 4, Bhatia had a number of impressive projects under her belt, with the actor specifically describing her time on Succession as an "unreal" experience.
"It was nothing like anything that I've ever experienced as an actor," Bhatia said. "I think getting to work with such an incredibly talented cast and crew was such a blessing, and they had been mentors from the start."
"A lot of them didn't have kids when the show started, so I was kind of their first kid before they all ended up having kids. ... Even if I wasn't on set so much, they were all so supportive and they all had a parental instinct with us, because there were only two kids on the entire show, and you know how intense the material is of the show. So they would always have to remind us after every take to never repeat what they're saying, because I was eight years old on the set and there were F-bombs flying everywhere."
Specifically when it came to working with Jeremy Strong, who played her father on Succession, Strong had some words of caution for the young actors playing his children.
"With Jeremy's method acting, every time we wrapped he would remind us to never do what he does, because he would smoke, drink, and then he would like drown in a pool," Bhatia said. "So he was like, 'Please don't ever repeat anything that Kendall does.'"
While Succession was a huge hit, when Bhatia moved into The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, it was a particularly "special project" for her.
"It was sort of my first time having a significant role in a project, and I feel like I grew a lot as an artist, not just as an actor, on that set," Bhatia said. "I learned a lot about what being on a set was really like in the terms of chemistry of actors and chemistry of crew, and what it was like being on set every day for intense hours, and how to play hockey and act at the same time."
"But I loved getting to play my character, because I think she didn't fall into any sort of crazy stereotype. She sort of pushed the boundaries of what someone that looks like me can tell story-wise on a set. And I loved how strong willed she was, just like Vera in that sense, and it was just a great experience for me. I learned a lot from the writers and the producers and the directors."
While Bhatia has had significant success on screen, she's also working to hone her skills behind the camera, including attending New York University (NYU).
"I knew I wanted to do filmmaking and I knew that NYU was the number one film school in the country, and it had such a unique program," she shared."They really want to make you a wholesome filmmaker in the sense of learning every single part of a film set. And to me, that's so interesting.
"You can ask literally every Disney employee that I've worked with, I'm the kind of person that wants to know what everyone is doing. ... I learned from so many incredible filmmakers, and I get to bring that knowledge with me to NYU."
Bhatia shared that she has two movies in the works right now, taking on a producer role, and she's hoping to move into a project where she can be the director or writer in the future.
"My goal is to just sort of grow as an artist and test my limits as an artist," she said. "I'm really excited to kind of just find my voice as an artist, and see how people can resonate with my work, and if people can enjoy the stories that I want to tell."
