In 2025, fictional girl group HUNTR/X took over the world thanks to Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters. Now, the streamer is bringing a new fictional pop star to our screens in director Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn. Her name? Venus Nova.
Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Venus is the biggest star in Ray Gunn‘s sprawling, retro-futuristic city of Metropia, reaching the kind of media ubiquity we’d associate with Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. Even if you wanted to escape her reach, you couldn’t: Holographic ads for her next album, Welcome to the Future, top skyscrapers and stand several stories tall.
However, Venus’ superstar status comes with a high price. Her public outbursts and tumultuous relationships are catnip to Metropia’s frenzied press, and they’re enough to land her at the center of private investigator Ray Gunn’s (voiced by Sam Rockwell) murder investigation.
Credit: Skydance Animation / Netflix
For Venus to be a larger-than-life icon as well as Ray Gunn‘s second lead, Bird and his team had to construct both her pop persona and her troubled personal life. At a press day at Netflix’s animation studios, Bird was joined by art director Wendell Luebbe and VFX supervisor Adel Abada to discuss crafting the latest entry in a long, illustrious line of movie pop stars.
Instead of being inspired by pop stars of today, Venus’ look draws on screen legends of the 20th century, emphasizing the “retro” in Ray Gunn‘s retro-futuristic setting.
“She went through all kinds of permutations, but ended up [with] a Lauren Bacall meets Veronica Lake look,” Luebbe told press.
According to Luebbe and Abada, costume designer Neysa Bove designed 23 looks for Venus, including the gown she wears in her introductory performance. As Venus rehearses a tongue-in-cheek number, one of several songs written for the film by singer-songrwriter Kimbra, her gown shifts from angelic white to devilish red, complete with a light-up headpiece that mimics a halo and horns.
Credit: Skydance Animation / Netflix
One of the most challenging elements of the sequence was getting Venus’ sequined dress to a blinding, pop star-level of shine. Abada recalled Bird’s biggest note being, “Get me the sparkle.”
“If it’s sparkly enough, it reminds you of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Bird said, noting that the sequins on the dress for Venus’ stand-in are much less sparkly, to emphasize she’s not getting the quality fabrics.
But while Venus’ onstage image is undoubtedly glamorous, Ray Gunn emphasizes that life in the spotlight isn’t all glitter and rainbows. Metropia’s media loves to paint Venus as an uncontrollable diva, but as Ray gets to know her better, he learns that Venus’ fame is almost like a cage, and that she’s hiding painful secrets of her own.
“What was more interesting to me — that was an idea early on — is the idea of someone who’s really talented who is also a train wreck,” Bird said of Venus’ character.
Bird has been working on Ray Gunn since the ’90s, and in the time since then, he and the rest of the world have watched young stars like Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse get devoured by invasive media scrutiny and public ridicule.
“You’d see a picture of [Winehouse] with a bloody nose in front of a pub at 4 a.m. and you’d go, ‘Why is this woman looking for trouble?'” Bird said. “Then after she died, I saw the documentary, and I was sitting there feeling terrible, because she was so talented, and it was impossible for her to function with the people who were not looking out for her. So, that became an empathetic point when I was writing the later drafts of this.”
These stories of pop stars battling the negative side of fame reverberate today, exacerbated by social media discourse. Look no further than the internet picking apart Ariana Grande’s body. Or the fervor over Lola Young’s collapse at the All Things Go music festival and her subsequent break from performing. Or relentless speculation about the hiatuses of KATSEYE members Manon Bannerman and Sophia Laforteza. People would just as soon tear a star down as they would build them up, and even though Ray Gunn‘s Venus doesn’t draw direct inspiration from these modern stars, her story still speaks to our warped relationship to celebrity.
“I felt empathy for that character and people put in that position where they’re just thrust into the spotlight, whether they’re ready or not,” Bird said.
Ray Gunn premieres Dec. 18 on Netflix.
Travel costs for the production of this content were paid for by Netflix. The judgments and opinions of Mashable are our own.
