Cassandra Naud & Emily Tennant on Returning for INFLUENCERS Sequel
- Dec 9, 2025
- 5 min read
By Shannon McGrew
In INFLUENCERS, the sequel to 2023’s Influencer, in the sun-drenched countryside of southern France, CW (Cassandra Naud) lives a quiet, idyllic life with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar), hiding a dark obsession with murder and stolen identities. During an anniversary getaway, they cross paths with Charlotte (Georgina Campbell), a bold, alluring influencer whose curiosity quickly turns intrusive. When CW acts on a violent impulse, the consequences spiral out of control, and as Diane begins to suspect the truth, CW’s carefully constructed life threatens to collapse around her.
For the release of INFLUENCERS, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with actors Cassandra Naud (“CW”) and Emily Tennant (“Madison”). During their chat, they discussed everything from stepping back into these complex roles to the unexpected twists and emotional moments in the sequel.
Thank you both for speaking with me today. How was it stepping back into these roles and bringing CW and Madison back together on screen?
Emily Tennant: We’re so excited to get to do a sequel. Neither of us saw this coming. It was never in the cards; it was never discussed. A couple of years after making the first, our director [Kurtis David Harder] had a really great idea, and he started by gauging all of our interests separately: the returning cast, the cinematographer, and a couple of key players. He had written the first 30 pages, so he sent them to us and said, "What do you think?" It was so fun, and it took place in France and Bali, so we were like, yes, please, let’s make this movie [Laughs].
Cassandra Naud: We all love working together, but after reading the first 30 pages, it was an instant, “Hell Yeah.” CW has been such a joy to play with. I love her. She’s so complex, and I wanted to explore more about who she is and why she is the way she is. There were so many questions, which made it exciting, and I wanted to step back into her shoes.
Cassandra, CW’s experience with love in this film allows us to see a softer, more vulnerable side of her. How did exploring that connection shape the vulnerability in your performance?
Cassandra Naud: I need to shout out to Lisa Delamar, who plays Diane. When we saw her tape come through, I was like, “Oh my God, who is this beautiful angel?” Working with her was such an incredible honor. She’s so talented, and I would do it again.
[Exploring that connection] was beautiful and heartbreaking. It was something that I hadn’t thought about with her before, but of course, CW can find love. Of course, she’s human, she’s a real person. Reading the script and seeing how it all transpires was really, really special. It made me feel for her. Without going into spoilers, there’s a moment in the script when I cried. I’m excited for people to see it because it’s genuinely heartbreaking.
Emily, it’s so great to see Madison return, especially after what your character experienced in the first film. However, her perspective on social media has evolved significantly since then. How did tapping into that growth influence your performance in this installment?
Emily Tennant: I always found Madison interesting because even though she was in the throes of being an influencer and a successful one at that, you could tell there was something not quite right with it. She didn’t love it. I’m sure she loved the benefits of it, but you could tell there was just something kind of off. In the sequel, after she loses everything, and we see her in a really desperate place, you could see someone give up in that situation. I think she decides that she’d rather get revenge. So, we get to dive into this really motivated version of Madison, and before I thought she was kind of floating, and now she has a purpose and a drive.
I don’t want to give too much away, but one of my favorite moments in the film is a little fight scene between the two of you. Can you walk me through the preparation that went into bringing that sequence to life?
Cassandra Naud: Emily and I ended up doing some fight training here in Vancouver before we left for Bail, and then when we got there, we had so much room to play. We had props that magically showed up, and we got to use and add to the scene, which added so many layers and shifted the tone. It was honestly just so fun. It felt like we were at camp, just hanging out with our friends and fighting each other.
Emily Tennant: That was the most exciting way to start the film: Cass and I getting to really get started before we even started traveling. Cassandra has such a great background in dance and martial arts, so I felt very safe and cared for. Our stunt coordinator, Kirk Caouette, was terrific. Our stunt doubles, Tally Rodin and Florine Silva, were wonderful. Cass did about 90% of her stuff, and I would probably say I did 80%. There are some things in there where our stunt doubles took one for the team for sure. That [scene] took five days to film, and it was how we started the movie. It set the tone for us, the crew, everybody. We’re in this magical location, having this very fun, serious, silly, all of the above, fight. It was a really great way to kick things off.
What do you hope viewers take away from this installment that sets it apart from the first film?
Emily Tennant: Our director, Kurt, did a really amazing job exploring different influencers. We’re exploring hypocrisy, and I think that’s really something that people need to understand: what you are watching isn’t always the truth.
Cassandra Naud: Kurt humanized influencers in a really lovely way. When influencers find their niche, when they see the thing that’s going to make them money, they zone in on it, and that’s what they’re stuck doing forever. Maybe that’s not what they had in mind, or that’s not who they are, or perhaps they don’t even believe in the thing that they said that made them go viral. But now they’re this thing. You just never know who someone is on the internet and who they are in real life.
INFLUENCERS lands on Shudder December 12th.
