Lana Condor on Why She Always Believed in ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ and Her Plan to Return to Romance

It’s been a busy year for Lana Condor, with the actress fresh off the release of three major projects this year. The ballerina acton-thriller Pretty Lethal dropped on Prime Video in March, while her summer thriller The Devil’s Mouth hit the streamer in July. But the crown of her summer has been the long-awaited film Coyote vs. ACME.

“It’s so unbelievable,” Condor tells The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s journey. Coyote vs. ACME’s release was looking unlikely. The film was initially shelved in 2023 by Warner Bros. Discovery. Eventually, the film was able to be shopped around and landed Ketchup Entertainment last year. It was finally released three weeks ago.

She adds, “call me naive, but I didn’t even know you could do that, so I didn’t even know that was even allowed.”

When Condor, who made her film debut as teenager in XMen: Apocolyse, first got the call, it wasn’t who from one would expect. Her co-star Will Forte called her while she was in Japan. “He was under the impression that I had gotten this call [to tell me] that Warner Bros. was going to can it,” she says. But she hadn’t known.

Condor’s main emotion surrounding the project since it was initially pulled has been confusion. She remembers getting calls just two days before it was pulled that test screenings were doing well, so the idea this could happen never crossed her mind.

“When I picked up the phone from Will, I was like, ‘Oh my God, Will, did you hear the great news? It’s testing so well,” the actress says. “The poor guy had to tell me himself, and he was horrified.”

In the aftermath, understandably, Condor began to question whether or not the movie they’d made, which she always believed was good, actually held up. Much of the movie had been done in front of a green screen with CGI — maybe it was bad, her brain told her. She trusted her cast, crew and director, but doing a movie like Coyote vs. ACME was different than others she’d done.

Coyote vs. ACME also gave Condor another first — her first “funeral” screening. “We watched it, and it was so good. That was worse,” she says. “Everyone went through their own emotional journeys, and maybe call me again naive or whatever, but I just didn’t believe that a film that is like this wouldn’t see the light of day.”

Thankfully, she was right, and the film has seen the light of day — and it’s raked in about $54.6 million at the North American box office. It’s an odd moment for Condor to be seeing and promoting it because she was, by her own admission, a different person when she filmed it. She sees it with a bit of detachment and considers herself a true audience member.

Condor’s mostly hoping people seeing the film, because she loves it and she’s proud of it. But she’s also hoping it sends a message. The experience, she’s quick to point out, is not her first with something she’s done essentially disappearing, as another film she did, Moonshot for HBO Max was pulled from the streamer in 2022.

“You might think that having bad things happen to good people like that is devastating, and it was. But weirdly, I think because we all went through it together — everyone grieved together, everyone celebrated together — I feel like it gave me a little bit more faith,” she says of her Coyote experience.

After this year of action, thriller and mystery, Condor’s ready to go back to something she’s always had in her heart. “I was doing all these films that are against genre. Honestly, I was doing them because I loved the scripts and wanted to challenge myself as an actor,” she says. “Now that most of it’s out, and there’s not too many left that are unreleased, what I’ve learned is that my heart is with romance.”

Condor initially broke out as the lead of Netflix’s adaptation of Jenny Han’s young adult romance novels To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. In the wake of that success, she’d mostly been hungry to show that should could do any genre she set her mind to. It’s something she’s noticed with other young actors who came up the way she did.

She’s quick to clarify it wasn’t a time for experimentation — she truly loved the movies she’s done — but Condor had been pushing herself out of her comfort zone. “I love being in a romantic world. I love encouraging other people to fall in love. I love all of that,” she says, adding that she also loves thrillers.

The actress explains that whenever she meets filmmakers around town that ask her for her dream project, she’s quick to name a Mr. and Mrs. Smith-type project, something that can combine her love for romance and thrillers.

Despite her tendency to lean mainstream, she’s also hoping to dig into the indie space as well. She realized recently she’d never even been to Sundance. “I want to go back to romance, and I think I have a lot to offer there,” she says. “I’ve been lucky enough to be doing this for over a decade now, and I’ve always just followed my gut instinct, and so far, I’m pretty happy with the choices that I’ve made.”