Simon Rex on His ‘Blink Twice’ Character, His Career Second Chance from ‘Red Rocket’ and Passing Zoe Kravitz’s Vibe Test

“I passed the vibe test,” says Simon Rex of how he landed his role in “Blink Twice,” Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut out Friday. When assembling her cast, Kravitz wanted to make sure everyone would be able to hang, given the shoot would require them all to live in the jungle in Mexico together for months. 

But it wasn’t just vibes for Rex; the actor, 50, is enjoying an act two in his career thanks to Sean Baker’s 2021 movie “Red Rocket,” which introduced Rex to Hollywood as a serious actor to be contended with. Rex, who rose to fame in the ‘90s as an MTV VJ before starring in the “Scary Movie” franchise and the WB’s “What I Like About You,” won best actor at the Indie Spirit Awards for the role, and since then has had scripts coming his way like never before. In addition to “Blink Twice,” he’s just wrapped Nic Pizzolatto’s new movie, alongside Vince Vaughn and Al Pacino, which he says he landed after Pizzolatto saw him in “Red Rocket,” which is just one of eight upcoming films.

“Sean Baker gave me a shot when nobody else would. He later told me, ‘I always thought you should be working more.’ And this business is really tough. There’s a lot of people with talent out there, and there’s only a few seats at the table, so it’s hard to make it once, much less have a comeback or whatever you want to call it,” Rex says. “I didn’t really work for over a decade. And I think Sean wanted to prove to people that he could show someone like me could do it.”

The script for “Blink Twice” grabbed him immediately; the story follows Frida (Naomi Ackie), who is working a catering gig one night when she meets tech mogul Slater King (played by Channing Tatum, Kravitz’s fiancée) and accepts his invitation to join a trip to his private island. After an initial few days of bliss, things slowly start to appear not as they seem. Rex is Cody, Slater’s best friend and personal chef. 

“The movie is dealing with some heavy subject matter, but I’m at this place where I want to do stuff like that. I don’t want to play it safe,” Rex says. “Especially after doing ‘Red Rocket,’ where the subject matter was really heavy, I just realized that this is what I want to do. I want to do stuff that’s scary, that’s not safe. I am sort of having my second chance here with my career, and I want to do stuff that excites me and that makes people feel something and just not do safe cookie-cutter stuff. So this movie was perfect for what I want to do.”

The friend group that circles Slater, of which Rex’s Cody is part of, is easily recognizable to the actor, who lived in L.A. for 20 years before relocating out to Joshua Tree five years ago.

“There’s a lot of people like that in L.A. who have a lot of money and they abuse their power and they’re doing drugs recklessly. I’ve seen this type of person around, and so it’s not even necessarily something that as an actor I had to pull from, but it was familiar enough that when I read it, I was like, ‘oh yeah, I know this type of person that Channing’s playing,’” he says. “I guess that’s what influenced Zoë to write about it, because this movie deals with a lot of power dynamics.”

Rex says he knew Kravitz would be a great first-time director, but even he was blown away when he saw the final cut of the film.

“What I liked about the movie is that we’re all living in this collective ‘Twilight Zone’ the last few years. Everything is so weird that I think it’s really hard to make art that’s as surreal as real life, right? Everything’s so strange right now,” he says. “I thought Zoë did a really good job at making something that is as ‘Twilight Zone’ as what we’re all living together.”

“Blink Twice” will be one of two movies Rex is in that come out Friday: he also has a role in the comedy “Greedy People,”  which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lily James.

“I guess some movie theaters will have both movies — that’s pretty crazy that I’ll have two movies in a theater at the same time,” Rex says, taking it in. “I guess a testament to where I’m at, which is really awesome. I’m just grateful.”