Suncoast Star Nico Parker Shares Best Advice from ‘Incredibly Supportive’ Mom Thandiwe Newton (Exclusive)

Nico Parker might have been intimidated by her first big leading role – if it weren’t for her mother Thandiwa Newton’s guidance.

On the eve of filming the recent hit of the Sundance Film Festival Suncoast (currently in theaters and also streaming on Hulu), 19-year-old Parker admits that he “had a little self-doubt that I could pull off a narrative and a story like that and have the audience be compelled throughout.”

As Doris, a teenager coping with her sick brother who moves to the same Florida hospice as the dying Terri Schiavo in 2005, Parker had her share of heavy dramatic material, with Laura Linney and Woody Harrelson in supporting roles.

But Newton, 51, has been “incredibly supportive” as both a parent and a peer, the young star tells PEOPLE. “You can do it” theme [runs] through all our conversations.”

Nico Parker and Thandiwe Newton.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

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She adds that she was awarded an Emmy Western world the star’s feedback is “never industry or acting specific. It’s more just general life advice.”

Parker also turned to her father, A ticket to heaven writer and director Ol Parker, for thoughts. “They both read the script, they liked the script,” she recalls Suncoasta semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama by screenwriter and director Laura Chinn.

“Because it’s a film that’s overwhelmingly full of Doris, I just think the idea of ​​having to be the central narrator of something like that was incredibly intimidating.” But both parents gave the actress the confidence she needed to take on the role that Sundance audiences would later praise her for; Parker received a jury award at the festival recognizing her groundbreaking performance.

“Everything they tried to instill in me as a person, ways of how to behave and how not to behave or how to behave towards others — all of that, I think you just accept and let it grow inside you as it will. And so a lot of that I’ve definitely taken and used in a work environment, but it’s never specific to that.”

Laura Linney and Nico Parker in ‘Suncoast’.

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

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Parker also found elements in the Suncoast it was “reminiscent” of her adolescence, even though Doris’ parents are nothing like Parker’s. “The way I connected with the character was the way I think every teenager feels misunderstood by the people around them. I think everyone, growing up, can feel so unique, and everything that happens to you, even though it might happen to other people, feels like it’s such an independent experience.”

She adds that teenagers – on screen and in real life – can be seen as “selfish because they want to go to prom or have a boyfriend or get drunk. You often look at that character and see it as a shallow void. But I think as a teenager it’s so common to just crave experience, crave new things. And I just loved it [Doris] she had it in her.”

Suncoastsays Parker, “illuminates everyone’s different ways of coping, feeling and healing.”

Thandiwe Newton lookalike daughter Nico Parker walks red carpet with dad at ‘Last of Us’ premiere

Suncoast.

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Parker’s parents married in 1998 and divorced in 2022. They have another daughter, Ripley, 23, as well as a son, Booker Jombe, 9.

Newton, whose recent credits include voice roles in Big mouth and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nuggetshe said in 2018 that she would protect Parker’s entry into Hollywood “like a lioness.”

In conversation with the British This morningshe praised her daughter’s work in Disney’s live action Dumbo. “She was on endless sets,” Newton said at the time. “Not that she takes it for granted, but it’s not a world she feels she has no right to be in.”

Parker also played Sarah Miller, Joel Pedro Pascal’s daughter, in the hit 2023 drama. The last of us. She will next star in a live-action film adaptation How to train a dragonplanned for 2025.

Suncoast is in theaters and on Hulu.

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Source: HIS Education