*The story of Romeo and Juliet still resonates around the world. The new film With A Kiss I Die, being released August 28 by Clownfish Productions online, puts several controversial twists on Shakespeare’s tragedy, the first being that gorgeous newcomer Ella Kweku, a woman of color, plays Juliet Capulet. Second: Not only is Juliet still alive after 800 years, she is being transformed –against her will – into a vampire. And there are more twists to come.
“There will be people that love the idea, and people that absolutely hate it. I don’t think there will be any in-between,” says Kweku, also a singer and international model from Spain’s Canary Islands. “A lot of people have rewritten the story, but this is nothing like I’ve seen before.”
In With A Kiss I Die – titled after Juliet’s final lines in the original play – Juliet wanders the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini. Taken from her tomb in Verona by a selfish vampire named Father and revived as one of the living dead, Juliet still mourns the death of Romeo and the fact that she was stolen from his side. Though she walks in daylight, sustained by blood from a living donor, this will change once she drinks from a victim she kills herself. “She refuses to do that because if she does she won’t feel anything anymore,” Kweku explains of her character. “She is still holding on to Romeo’s memory and she doesn’t want to lose those feelings.”
As pressure from Father mounts to take that final step, Juliet finds herself falling in love again with an American tourist. Realizing that new love in no way diminishes her old love, Juliet makes a choice to save them both from Father’s wrath that echoes the tragic pledge of love made centuries earlier. The final twist: Her new love is a woman, played by first-time American actress Paige Emerson.
Kweku, who brings a fresh beauty and quiet intensity to the role of Juliet, says the film’s message is simple. “I think it’s to keep true to herself,” she explains. “Juliet is still in love with Romeo and refuses to turn and be a vampire even though that’s the easiest thing to do. Also, when we fall in love and it’s over, we think that we’re never going to fall in love again and that life is over. This shows that there are second chances to fall in love and see life in a different light.”
Playing modern-day Juliet
With A Kiss I Die is only Kweku’s second big-screen appearance. However, playing Juliet Capulet – first written as a 13-year-old white Italian – was a fluke. She saw the script by helping another actor friend, who is dyslexic, to read it through. When he suggested that she audition for it, she thought, No way. That soon turned into, Why not?
Arab-American writer and director Ronnie Khalil, best known as a stand-up comic in both the Middle East and the U.S., had planned traditional casting for With A Kiss I Die, with a white Juliet and a male love interest. However, as an advocate of diversity in film, Khalil changed his mind once he saw Kweku’s audition. He also cast Emerson, a white actress, as her love interest once he observed the chemistry between the two. The script was not changed to accommodate the casting choices. “Working with Ronnie was great, he is extremely patient, there were some days where I don’t know how he held it together,” says Kweku of her director. “He was a good team mediator … Also, if you thought your character should say something, he would allow you to change a line or two. Nothing felt forced.”
While the vampire storyline is somewhat dark, filming in daylight helped the atmosphere. In fact, the incongruity of filming one scene of the lesbian vampire interracial Shakespeare story in a church in a conservative Greek village sparked so much giggling among cast and crew that they almost couldn’t complete it.
A native of the Canary Islands
From an early age, Kweku wanted to be a performer. Born to a white English mother and a black Canarian father, Kweku and her younger sister were the only brown faces in Tenerife, the capital city of the Canary Islands. “Growing up there was very easy, you have the beautiful beaches, people are very warm. We have a lot of tourism there, so people come there from England and Germany,” says Kweku, who is bilingual. “The islands maintain many cultural traditions from mainland Spain, though there is quite a bit of Cuban influence as well.”
She was quickly steered by her mother toward the islands’ Royal Academy of London to study dance, specifically ballet. By 13, she was one of the top-ranked ballerinas at the school and thought her career was set until she was derailed by a knee injury. “My mother said, so you cannot dance for two years, what do you want to do? I said, I want to sing.” Ella enrolled in the island’s other arts academy, this one devoted to musical theater. It was here that she developed her vocal and acting chops.
Upon graduation, Kweku’s good looks and poise led her to modeling; she has appeared in campaigns for Mac, Adidas, Clarisonic, Lancôme, and Nivea among others. She also competed in “Spain’s Next Top Model” on Spanish television.
Modeling to acting
Kweku got her break as an actress in Sony Pictures’ 2013 Spanish-language film Ismael alongside well-known Spanish actors Belen Rueda and Mario Casas. The story of a mixed-race Spanish boy who runs away to find his father, Ismael earned Ella a CEC Medals nomination for “Best Upcoming Actress.” As the only woman of color in a Spanish film, she says the experience was bittersweet.
“They were not used to having black actors in Spain at this point,” she explains. “[The film company] didn’t put my picture … [or] my name on the posters. So once the movie came out some media outlets started asking on the Internet, ‘Why isn’t her face on the poster? She’s playing the mother of this child in the story.’ Then they had to change the poster, so they put a small picture, on the bottom, with me kissing this guy and you couldn’t even see my face.”
She adds that the issue of Spain’s inability to see a black woman as representative of the country also surfaced when she was eliminated from a local beauty pageant and again on “Spain’s Next Top Model.” This racial divide was evident to her growing up, when, sadly, television in the Canary Islands did not offer positive images of people of color. “We didn’t get much American TV in the Canary Islands, but when we saw black people on TV they would be unintelligent or aggressive, you know? I hadn’t really interacted much with black people at home; my sister and I were the only black people in school,” she explains.
A chance encounter with Halle
She realized how her own views had been impacted during a chance encounter in Hollywood. “I was in this bar, and I saw three African American women come in, and they were so elegant and intelligent, they weren’t what I was used to seeing on TV. Five minutes passed and then it hit me that one of them was Halle Berry … I didn’t want to interrupt, but when they were leaving I went up to her and introduced myself.”
Kweku says Berry was gracious and took the headshot Kweku offered and was then photographed by paparazzi with the headshot in her hand. Only Kweku’s name visible. Kweku then found herself featured in tabloid stories here and in the U.K. “I think my grandfather in England got a kick out of it,” she laughs.
Actor, model, and singer
With A Kiss I Die is scheduled for release next month. Meanwhile Kweku – a Pisces who says she is sensitive to people and vibrations – is following her other passion, music. A singer and songwriter as well, Kweku continues to work on her songcraft and perform between commercial modeling gigs.
“I feel like Sleeping Beauty and I’m waking up,” she says of her multi-pronged career. “I always think I’m here to help people. I’m not sure how I translate this yet, but it will definitely be in service to something. I’m ready to break out.”
More info about the film can be found at: www.withakissidie.com. The official trailer is available at https://vimeo.com/262408040 .
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
