For a few months when she was young, Blu Hunt’s grandmother lived with her and her father in Sacramento, California.
Her father and grandmother didn’t always get along, and Hunt rarely saw her grandmother, who lived on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.
But for those few months that her grandmother lived with them, she taught Hunt about the culture of her people, the Oglala Lakota.
“She would speak to me in Lakota,” Hunt said. “It was a time I got to know her the most.”
Today, the 25-year-old woman is an actress, and her first full-length film, “The New Mutants,” opened in theaters across America on Friday. In the new Marvel movie, Hunt plays Dani Moonstar, a young Cheyenne woman who is seeking to understand her powers while surrounded by young people like her.
Directed by Josh Boone, the film is about four young mutants being held in an isolated hospital for psychiatric monitoring.
Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga) struggles to teach them to rein in their mutant abilities, but when Moonstar is admitted into the hospital, strange occurrences begin to take place. The patients are plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, and their abilities and friendships are tested as they fight to make it out alive.
The storyline is taken from the Demon Bear saga featured in “The New Mutants” comic book and revolves around Moonstar confronting her demons, figuratively and literally, while the rest of the patients fight to survive and save Moonstar’s life.
In “The New Mutants,” Hunt’s character is the sole survivor of a mysterious disaster that decimated her people's reservation. She doesn’t understand her powers, which threaten her and those around her, and her arrival brings strange visions and nightmares to life for the other residents.
The film features a cast of up-and-coming actors and actresses, including Maisie Williams of “Game of Thrones” fame and Anya Taylor-Joy from “The Witch,” “Split” and “Glass.” Williams plays Rahne Sinclair, a religious Scot who transforms into the Wolfsbane, and Taylor-Joy embodies the Illyana Rasputin/Magik, who exists on the boundaries of good and evil, innocence and corruption.
The film also features Charlie Heaton of the television series “Stranger Things,” whose character Cannonball has the ability to project himself through the air at incredibly fast speeds.
Hunt appeared in the CW horror fantasy series “The Originals.” She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, where she starred as Vera in the play “A Month in the Country.” Since filming ended for “The New Mutants,” Hunt has starred in the Netflix series “Another Life” and recently appeared on the ABC hit series “Stumptown.”
She is currently set to star in the film “Fathers & Prophets,” based on the Dave Eggers novel, which is slated to start production later this year.
In an interview with Indianz.Com, Hunt said she prepared for the role of Moonstar with an acting coach, who worked with her on dialogue and put her through what she described as “crazy physical training.”
She said her work on “The Originals” took her to Atlanta and forced her to travel outside of California for the first time in her life.
“I didn’t get to have a jet-setter life growing up at all,” she said.
