Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch Detail Tapping Into Dark Characters and Gaining Confidence at Newport Beach Film Festival

Get used to seeing these faces this awards season. Variety’s 2026 10 Actors to Watch took the stage in Newport Beach, California, for a conversation about performance, craft and process on October 18. Variety moderated this conversation in partnership with Newport Beach Film Festival.

The panel kicked off at the Balboa Bay Resort, highlighting this year’s selection: Jaafar Jackson (“Michael”), Inde Navarrette (“Obsession”), Ray Nicholson (“The Mosquito Bowl”), Esmé Creed-Miles (“Sense and Sensibility”), Mariana Di Girólamo (“Wild Horse Nine”), Rosalind Eleazar (“Misty Green”), Guitarricadelafuente (“La Bola Negra”), Summer H. Howell (“Carrie”), Ruth Madeley (“Being Heumann”) and Joseph Zada (“The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping”).

During the conversation, Navarrette opened up about portraying Nikki and the challenge of developing a character since there is so little of the real Nikki in “Obsession.”

“It was really just my first opportunity where I kind of had the freedom, to a certain extent, to do whatever I could,” she said. “I really find the complication of Nikki to be what is the most beautiful about her. And I find people come up and they talk to me about her — specifically women — say, ‘That is a character that I find myself in.’ Of course people like to laugh, but I find that there’s a complexity, not just in women, but in us as people, where we are multiple people, and that’s beautiful.”

Jackson also spoke about the process of becoming his uncle, Michael Jackson, not just in his skills as a performer but also in his confidence.

“I just wanted it to come across as I’ve done films before. I didn’t want to be seen as a first-time actor. I wanted to be able to, of course, continue to learn, but have that presence and awareness of how to walk into a room, how to get pulled in any direction because it doesn’t always go as planned or what’s on the page,” he said. “Something can happen the day of, and I was experiencing that, and I was glad I was able to prep for that and just to be in that space where Michael would do it, just to continue to be in the mind of Michael.