Harley Quinn Smith Talks Bringing Youth and Diversity to Jay and SIlent Bob Reboot

2019 was the year that the world at large caught on to Harley Quinn Smith. The daughter of geek icon Kevin Smith, Harley had appeared in Tusk and Yoga Hosers already before going on to work with Quentin Tarantino on the Best Picture contender Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. She also appeared in Kevin Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, a sequel/reboot/something to Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, a 2001 film in which she appeared while she was still a baby. This time around, she’s playing Jay’s illegitimate daughter, who ends up joining the stoner duo on a road trip to California to attend a convention dedicated to two superhero characters loosely based on Jay and Bob.

We recently spoke with Smith, and asked her to give us the lowdown on making a film that required her to bounce off of some of the people she’s closest to in the world, while making jokes about her father (no, not Silent Bob — actual Kevin Smith jokes) and embedding herself into a dynamic that has been working well for 25 years without feeling like a third wheel. No big deal, right?

“I love Jay with my whole heart,” Smith said of her onscreen dad. “He means the world to me. But when I act, I’m not myself at all. I like to completely leave myself behind and become my character, and I can’t really do it any other way. When doing this film, I never really looked at him and saw him as my Uncle Jay. I always saw him as my dad. So it was never difficult to separate him — but once we cut and once we left for the day, it was always really cool to be like, ‘that was a really special thing that we shared together.’ We were both able to pull really cool performances out of one another, and that’s always special. A lot of the time during lunch and in the mornings we would run lines together. So we had special time, and memories that we made together.”

For somebody who is not comfortable acting as herself, of course, Smith was required by the nature of this script to do a lot of stretching. In addition to appearing onscreen opposite her real-life father and his best friend, she also had to make several jokes about how much her character hated Kevin Smith, and was frustrated that he puts his daughter in all of his movies. She said that, believe it or not, that did not any additional hurdles because at this point, shutting herself off from the work is kind of second nature.

“I can’t act as myself,” Smith said. “I don’t like speaking as myself to the general public. I find it really difficult. Even as close as this film is to our lives and our family, I just can’t do it. Otherwise I’ll choke and get too nervous. I have to completely divorce myself. That’s why I love being in my band so much: during that, I’m not myself. I’m kind of playing another character. Every member of my band wears wigs every performance so we do kind of have these alter egos. I think I’m drawn to that as well because I don’t have to be myself.”

You can check out Smith’s band, The Tenth, here.

That is a big difference between her and her father, obviously; Smith has a Stan Lee-like ability to ingratiate himself to audiences and to present a friendly and idealized version of himself, ready at all times to be “on.”

“My dad is definitely the person he presents, but that’s like him on crack,” Smith explained. “He’s not that energetic in real life. He just has a version of himself that he presents to the world, that’s like the performance version of himself, and that’s why he’s able to do it so well.”

Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital video on demand platforms. Fans who want to catch the last leg of the Reboot Roadshow tour — which includes big-screen viewings of the movie followed by a Q&A with Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, and sometimes other guests, can check out RebootRoadshow.com.