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On 16 November, audiences will get their first taste of Judi Shekoni in the next instalment of the Twilight franchise Breaking Dawn 2. Born in Manchester, Judi has appeared in many British TV staples before relocating to Hollywood and achieving even more success. In many ways, she has achieved the ‘American Dream’, consistently succeeding in securing roles in popular American television shows and films. With her career reaching new heights thanks to her Twilight role the future is looking very bright indeed. Her British television career highlights include appearances in Casualty and Eastenders, in which she played Precious, the glamorous wife of gangster Angel Hudson. Upon my mentioning this, she could only remind me mournfully that she “missed The Bill.” Even more depressingly for her, she was unaware of its untimely demise in 2010, “I’ll never get my chance,” she wails.
Of course, despite Judi’s lack of a The Bill acting credit, she has achieved success in America on both the small screen and big. Blessed with stunning looks, she played a love interest in a King of Queens episode and a supermodel and potential suspect in an episode of NCIS. She says she always planned to move to America, as it’s the place with the most acting opportunities. Our question is, does she miss anything about the UK?
“I miss the people and the sense of humour, the sense of community that you get up north and even British television. For example, I mentioned Blind Date and they didn’t know what I was talking about.” Apart from this appalling lack of British television knowledge from her American colleagues, Judi says she finds L.A to be a little unsettling at times; “It’s a transient place,” she muses, “a lot of people came out here to achieve their dreams and it just didn’t happen.” She thinks her positivity has contributed to not getting caught up in this cynical nature. “You need to really truly believe down to your bones, down to yourself, that you’re different; that the statistics, the odds and the percentages don’t count to you because you’re different.” It is unsurprising that self belief is a key facet in such a ridiculously competitive industry as acting. As Jack Nicholson once said “I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself.”
Inevitably, discussion moves on to her role in the next Twilight film. She plays Zafrina, an Amazonian vampire, who has the power to make others see whatever she wants them to see. Judi says her time filming it was “one of the most enjoyable times of my life” and she is refreshingly honest in her knowledge that it will be fantastic for her career. Positivity emanates from every word as she recounts her love for the Twilight books and the director of the film, Bill Condon, who was behind 2006’s Dreamgirls (one of Judi’s favourite movies), amongst others. She remains confident that fans will react well to her portrayal of Zafrina. “I’m how she’s described in the book so I’ve got that going for me,” and she promises faithfulness to the books and cites the immensely positive receptions the film has received so far to validate her claim that this will be one of the best Twilight films yet. “It’s all been very exciting,” she adds nostalgically.
It is a very rare breed of film that is more or less guaranteed to make money, and the Twilight films fall into that category. Though William Goldman famously said of Hollywood: “nobody knows anything,” he had clearly not witnessed Breaking Dawn Part 1’s $138 million opening weekend. For an actress, this is a chance to be seen by millions. However, this does not intimidate Judi. Starting her career with the likes of Eastenders, it must have been a significantly different experience to work on the set of a $131 million film, yet she relished it. “The sets were perfect and you could take time to get things right and do it on a much bigger scale.”
So does the filmmaking process interest her at all? “I’m interested in it from an actor’s point of view, especially the writing, but I have no desire to direct like other actors do. It just seems like a very complicated process.” With acting at the forefront of her agenda, Judi revels in the acting process and she thinks one of her strengths is knowing herself “and knowing what kind of acting I can do.”
On film sets, there is a lot of down time due to scene changes and location designing so what does she do to pass the time?
“I read a lot of books on spirituality and the limits of human possibilities,” which sounds like good reading for an ambitious woman like herself, “and I found the Rich Dad Poor Dad books very helpful, especially if you come from a family that’s not very affluent.” A quick Google search showed me these books are extremely popular in the United States and try to teach the reader about financial independence and how it can be achieved. It demonstrates how Judi is always thinking about her future. The excitement in her voice is immediately apparent during any discussion of what lies in store for her after Breaking Dawn. Does she want to work with any particular director or actor in the future? “I’d really like to work with a director called Steve McQueen,” and here is where my interviewing skills are shown to be amateurish at best as I interrupt to squeal, “I love him! He did Hunger!” Judi giggles and replies, “Yeah he did, I love his films.” Despite my liking of McQueen, I was still somewhat surprised that she chose him as the first name she would like to work with. McQueen is excellent at doing small, artful character studies, which would indicate Judi sees her career going in a new and exciting direction. As she herself admits, her role in Twlight could be a platform for her to obtain more varied roles as an actress. Another director she admires is Quentin Tarantino: “I really love his films and the dialogue.”
It was coming to the end of our interview and I thought it was only right to ask her if she had any advice for young actresses: “You need to believe in yourself in order to put in a really good character and to have determination and, of course, to work hard.” And that is exactly what Judi has done during her ten years in the industry. The impression I got from our short phone interview was that she was self-assured, ambitious and down to Earth. Her grounded attitude is what was particularly refreshing, in regard to her delightful British sense of humour and not speaking with dull sound bites. Also, it has likely been instrumental in her achieving her dream of becoming an actress in Hollywood. British acting certainly has a new star.