M.Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller TRAP arrives in theaters this week on Friday, August 2.

Prior to the film’s release, Saleka Shyamalan spoke with Global Grind about the film, doing double duty as an actress and musical artist for her role of Lady Raven and how the music helped dictate which real artists ended up in the movie.

In case you didn’t already know, M. Night Shyamalan filmed a real concert for the film, with production design and a real album, written and performed by his daughter Shaleka Shyamalan. One of our favorite parts of the film was seeing other real performing artists RUSS, who plays Parker, and Kid Cudi, who plays The Thinker, make concert cameos.

“The music kind of dictated those roles in a way,” Saleka Shyamalan told GlobalGrind about the Kid Cudi and RUSS connections. “Finding the right artists to feature on those songs specifically. Then the Kid Cudi role, obviously there’s a little bit of a backstory, imagining that this is a big artist in this world who kind of helped break Lady Raven. Which was kind of a beautiful thing because in real life he’s this amazing artist that I look up to so much who gave me a chance, by doing a song with me so it ended up being this beautiful kind of combination of real life and and fiction moment.”

We love to see it.

Source: Courtesy / Warner Bros. Pictures

Another very realistic aspect of Saleka’s Lady Raven character was her use of social media in the film.

“It’s this interesting thing in that it can be damaging, but it’s also this amazing tool to connect with people and I think if it’s done in the right way it’s this incredible weapon and thing that we have to use at our disposal,” Shyamalan told Global Grind. “I think a big theme in the movie was the idea of connection versus ostracizing people. Cooper’s character as not showing who he is to anybody else and being kind of alone in that and keeping everybody at distance, and then Lady Raven’s character as being connected with the entire world and what that means and being your true self to everybody and everybody feeling like they know you. Those two concepts end up warring with each other in the movie and coming to a head which was represented by the social media aspect.”

By the way, in case you didn’t realize we’re currently in the middle of a Shyamalan summer, thanks to M.Night and Saleka coming out with TRAP just after the release of The Watchers, which was directed by Saleka’s sister Ishana and produced by their dad.

Source: Courtesy / Warner Bros. Pictures

“It’s amazing,” Saleka told GG of working with her famous father. “He’s the best. He’s obviously such a master at his craft and because he’s my dad we have this built in comfort and understanding of each other and and safety built in there.”

“It’s been kind of crazy, but also really really fun,” she added about releasing a film not long after her sister’s. “I’m so proud of my sister she’s an incredible artist and and filmmaker and writer. The movie was amazing and I’m so proud of her. Because our movies were filming back-to-back, me and my dad were in Ireland all the time and then Ishana came to Toronto while we were shooting TRAP so it felt very familial the whole time.”