Amber Midthunder is taking a well-earned break from slaying monsters. The rising action heroine – star of Prey, the best instalment of the Predator sequence, and of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Apple TV+’s Godzilla spin-off – is moving into romantic comedy.
To be more accurate, she’s playing Sherry, a cute bank clerk, in Novocaine, a wacky new film from Dan Berk and Robert Olsen.
When her character is taken hostage by a ruthless bank robber, it spurs her love interest, the branch’s mild-mannered assistant manager, Nathan, to try to rescue her – with cartoon-violence results, given that he must carefully plan his life around his congenital insensitivity to pain, a genuine genetic disorder that the slapstick script interprets as a superpower.
“I’ve never done romantic comedy,” Midthunder says. “She’s not just the girl in the movie. In some ways, being in that space was so simple and also very scary. It was nerve-racking to play a character that in some ways is vulnerable.
“I’m so used to having the armour of a genre, of science-fiction or action. But making this movie was as much fun as watching the movie. I looked forward to going to work every day.” She smiles. “The ability to make people laugh? That’s so cool. That’s a real superpower.”
Novocaine brings together various “legacy talents”. Jack Quaid, who plays Nathan, is the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid; Ray Nicholson, who plays the bank robber, is the son of Jack Nicholson and Rebecca Broussard.
Midthunder also comes from a show-business family. The 27-year-old’s father is David Midthunder, an actor and stunt performer with credits in Hildalgo, Terminator Salvation and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Her mother, Angelique Midthunder, is an Emmy-nominated casting director and former stunt performer. Her parents met on the set of Kihachi Okamoto’s Japanese western East Meets West.
“I remember visiting my dad at work and wondering why he was dressed differently,” Midthunder says. “I had very simple thoughts and questions. ‘Why does he stand far away?’ ‘Suddenly everyone’s very quiet on set. And then suddenly everyone’s very loud.’ It was a mystery.”
Midthunder, a citizen of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribe, in Montana, was born on the Navajo Nation reservation in New Mexico. Her mother is originally Thai, with some Chinese ancestry. Her father is of Sahiya Nakoda, Hunkpapa Lakota and Sisseton Dakota descent.
Playing a romantic role in a Hollywood movie may not be as exhilarating as killing a Predator in Prey, but it is, she says, a significant step forward.
“The industry is starting to understand that indigenous people have so much to offer,” Midthunder says. “Not just as actors but as storytellers and make-up artists or whatever it is we do. We show up and we do it well when we’re given the space.
“Indigenous stories are important. It’s important to be looking for native stories and storytellers. But in Novocaine we have an indigenous mixed-race love interest, and it’s not really part of the conversation.
“In terms of representation, that also serves a very important purpose: just getting people used to seeing our faces on screen, thinking that it’s perfectly normal to see us in that space. That’s the goal.”
Despite the family footing, Midthunder found her own path into the film industry. “My parents have always been super supportive of me,” she says. “But they don’t take their work home with them. I didn’t really know what my parents’ jobs were.”
As a child she memorised episodes of her favourite Disney shows: Lizzie McGuire, Wizards of Waverly Place and That’s So Raven. She dates her obsession with the movies to a trip with her grandmother to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“I love that magical feeling,” she says. “You go into a theatre and watch a movie like Narnia and leave. But you still feel like you are in that world. I watched Novocaine in a screening room by myself and laughed all the way through. I forgot I was in it. I was just so hyped watching it. I find film-making so affecting. I love being transported.”
Midthunder imagined a career in mixed martial arts – she has taught Brazilian ju-jitsu – or as a make-up artist before landing her first role, aged nine, in Sunshine Cleaning, a starry 2008 dramedy featuring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin. When she was 17 she relocated to Los Angeles to pursue acting full-time.
She auditioned for a year before being cast in the Marvel-adjacent TV series Legion. The charismatic actor has subsequently been a regular in the series Roswell, New Mexico and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Midthunder learned how to handle an enormous Kenworth truck alongside Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne in The Ice Road. The Irish star was careful to introduce her to the media as his colead. “I’d love to adopt her,” Neeson told Entertainment Tonight in 2022. “She’s great. She’s a fantastic talent. She really is something else, this kid.”
“I have been so fortunate to work with really special actors like Liam,” Midthunder says. “Just to be able to watch them work is so cool. I nerd out with myself.”
Hollywood has made some strides towards increasing its representation of indigenous American actors in recent years, a corrective to decades of negative stereotyping and roles played by non-native actors. Alongside Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs) and Zahn McClarnon (Westworld), Midthunder is part of a new wave of indigenous stars.
In addition to Novocaine, you can catch the young actor as the surly minder to Ayo Edebiri’s intrepid reporter in the horror-comedy Opus.
“The next step is definitely finding film-makers,” Midthunder says. “We have so many people who have so much to offer. It’s a question of cultivating the talent that lives within our communities and allowing us to be the people who tell our stories – or whatever stories we want to tell.”
Her role in Prey, which was directed by Dan Trachtenberg, made history: playing a young 17th-century Comanche warrior determined to prove herself among the male hunters of her Great Plains tribe made her the first indigenous actor to headline a major franchise. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the first Predator film, she didn’t have a grenade launcher to fight its intergalactic hunter.
Midthunder’s pioneering turn was complemented by a crew and production team largely comprised of indigenous peoples, including a producer who was a member of the Comanche Nation.
“Going in, I think the scariest part was feeling like there was so much that was out of my control,” Midthunder says, “in terms of how the movie would turn out or in terms of what the representation would look like. But we had Jhane Myers as a producer, and she had so much input. Everybody respected what she had to say. ”
It matters who is behind the camera.
“I was really fortunate to have a director who listened to native voices,” the actor says. “Dan Trachtenberg is not native in any way. But he gave a lot of authority and placed a lot of importance on our communities. He worked with our communities.
“If you are not native you can look to Dan as an example of how to interact with our communities. That’s why the movie turned out like it did.”
Novocaine is in cinemas from Friday, March 28th
