Inde Navarrette thought she ‘bombed’ her 'Obsession' audition: ‘I was like, wow’

Inde Navarrette became a Hollywood sensation with her role in the hit film, Obsession. However, she thought, initially, her audition didn’t go as planned.

When the indie horror hit (released in May) took a victory lap at the Toronto International Film Festival with a panel discussion Navarrette and writer-director Curry Barker recalled how the actress booked the lead role of Nikki.

“I wanted to do something completely different than I’d ever done before,” said Navarrette, who previously starred in The CW’s Superman & Lois from 2021 to 2024. “I felt like I had this fire in my belly that I just wanted to show people what I could do and I didn’t have yet the opportunity.”

Barker’s script for Obsession, about a hopeless romantic whose magic wish to make his crush love him turns into something horrific, fit the bill, recalled Navarrette. “I was like, ‘Wow, what range and what endless things that you can do with Nikki.’”

Then came the auditions and chemistry reads, “I did a Zoom. I thought I bombed it,” said the actress. “We met on Zoom and it was pretty electric,” recalled Barker, “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh!’”

Navarrette “felt electrocuted,” she quipped. “I was lucky enough that he saw something in me that I didn’t feel like I had shown.”

Addressing the crowd, she added, “If anybody’s an actor here thinks that they do a bad job, maybe you didn’t.”

Obsession, costarring Michael Johnston, Cooper Tomlinson and Megan Lawless, became one of 2026’s most unexpected hits at the box office. It was produced on a reported $750,000 budget and shot in just 20 days.

“The process of making this movie was always, there was no guarantee of this thing ever getting made,” said Curry Barker. “The attitude was always, ‘Okay, we’ll write a good script and we’ll see.’”

Meanwhile, Inde Navarrette will next play Rogue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s upcoming X-Men movie.