Variety's 10 Actors to Watch Discuss Dark Roles and Building Confidence at Newport Beach Film Festival

Audiences should expect to see a lot of these faces as awards season unfolds. Variety's 2026 class of 10 Actors to Watch appeared on stage in Newport Beach, California, on October 18 for a discussion about performance, craft and process.

Variety moderated the conversation in partnership with the Newport Beach Film Festival. The panel took place at the Balboa Bay Resort and brought together this year's honorees.

The group includes Jaafar Jackson for "Michael," Inde Navarrette for "Obsession," Ray Nicholson for "The Mosquito Bowl," and Esmé Creed-Miles for "Sense and Sensibility." Also named were Mariana Di Girólamo for "Wild Horse Nine," Rosalind Eleazar for "Misty Green," Guitarricadelafuente for "La Bola Negra," and Summer H. Howell for "Carrie." Rounding out the list are Ruth Madeley for "Being Heumann" and Joseph Zada for "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping."

Navarrette spoke about playing Nikki in "Obsession," and about the difficulty of building the character when the film contains so little of the real Nikki. She described the project as her first chance to work with a measure of creative freedom.

"It was really just my first opportunity where I kind of had the freedom, to a certain extent, to do whatever I could," she said. She added that she finds Nikki's complication to be "the most beautiful" thing about her.

Navarrette said people, women in particular, have approached her to say they see themselves in the character. She noted that while people may like to laugh, there is a complexity in everyone, not only in women, in that people are made up of multiple selves. "That's beautiful," she said.

Jackson, meanwhile, discussed what it took to portray his uncle, Michael Jackson. The challenge went beyond reproducing the singer's skills as a performer and extended to capturing his confidence.

Jackson said he wanted to come across as someone who had already made films, and not as a first-time actor. While he intended to keep learning, he wanted to have the presence and awareness to walk into a room and be pulled in different directions, since things do not always go as planned or as written on the page.

"Something can happen the day of, and I was experiencing that, and I was glad I was able to prep for that and just to be in that space where Michael would do it, just to continue to be in the mind of Michael," he said.