How Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez Inspired This Mysterious Character in "Blade Runner 2049"

If you were preparing for a part in a dystopian sci-fi flick, who would you research?

Futurists like Elon Musk? Trigger-happy world leaders like Kim Jong-un? Challenging thinkers like Naomi Klein?

That’s amateur hour. To truly understand the end of society, you’d be better off watching the clip for "Look What You Made Me Do", or scrolling through the feeds of your Insta-faves.

Sylvia Hoeks, the Dutch star of Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited Blade Runner 2049, says she partly looked to Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez when preparing for her role as the mysterious Luv.

(In one scene, Luv orchestrates a drone-bombing from the comfort of her couch while getting a futuristic manicure. We look forward to seeing Swift do the same in her next music video.)

"I looked at certain young women that have high-profiles on social media like Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez, and who have a high following of people," she tells Student Edge.

"[They have] so many fans and their life takes place on social media most of the time. They have a very strong virtual life and they are followed every second of the day.

"That was very interesting for me; that perfection and that control in a sense, I used also for this character."

If you’re totally new to the world of Blade Runner, here’s what you need to know: 'Replicants' are bioengineered robots of the future that look and act like humans, yet are enslaved by humankind to do our grunt work. When they rebel, ‘Blade Runners’ are called in to interrogate and decommission them.

For 2049, Harrison Ford reprises the role of Rick Deckard from the original, while Ryan Gosling plays a fellow Blade Runner named Officer K. Hoeks' Luv, meanwhile, is the devoted assistant of Jared Leto’s nefarious replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace. And that’s all you—or I—get, for now. (Even before conducting the interview, we were only allowed to see 30 minutes of the secretive and still-under-wraps movie.)

"It’s been a tricky one, because people have been trying to trick me into telling them spoilers or who dies, who survives, who’s a replicant, who’s a human," Sylvia says.

"They all try to get something out of me, so it’s been a good learning experience. Maybe I’ll become a Russian spy next."

As if her research and Villeneuve’s elaborate sets weren’t enough to get her in the Blade Runner mood, the devotion of her method acting co-star, Leto (who played ‘blind’ throughout filming), brought an extra layer of reality and "tension".

"I’ve never worked with a method actor like Jared before," she says.

"I’m used to meeting the actor up front, talking about the scenes, maybe rehearsing a little bit. With him, it was just: I saw him on set and I introduced myself as Luv and he introduced himself as Niander Wallace; we went ahead from there.

"I think it brought an extra element to the scenes we had together, as in it created a little bit more distance, maybe? Like he was more untouchable and from my perspective, I was even longing more for his approval... [Luv’s] in awe of her master and she’ll do anything in the world for him. Not knowing each other was actually better maybe for how we were playing those scenes, creating an extra tension."

Sylvia says they finally met as themselves once shooting was finished. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a pet rat as a parting gift.

"We had a drink and we had a laugh; he was a very nice guy, but no weird presents like Suicide Squad," she says.

Ford, on the other hand, just kept trying to make her laugh.

"You have to keep your cool, otherwise you’d be down under the table laughing all the time," she says.

"He was just such a charming man and I just needed to tell myself, 'Focus on the scene; don’t listen too much to him', because his jokes would take you and you’d be out of it.

"But when the camera is on and action is called, he’s there for 200 per cent."

The question is, having lived inside the world of Blade Runner and glimpsed a vision of the year 2049, does Sylvia have any real concerns about the end of humankind?

"We drive computers; we have our iPhones; we have our iPads; we have TVs everywhere," she says.

"We cannot go without them; we’re so dependent on this online virtual life. It is scary in a way. How far will that go and will it be the end of us?

"That’s an interesting question you can ask yourself."

Good luck with that.

Blade Runner 2049 arrives in Australian cinemas October 5, 2017.

Photo: Sony Pictures