The King of Staten Island is now available to own on Digital, Blu-ray, and DVD. HollywoodLife has an EXCLUSIVE video focusing on Bel Powley and her role as Kelsey in the film. Bel initially thought her audition for the role went badly, but co-star Pete Davidson later told her that she “crushed it.”
For director, co-writer, and producer Judd Apatow, casting Bel was great for the movie, especially since she was already friends with Pete. “I had seen Bel Powley in a movie called Diary of a Teenage Girl. Every once in a while you see someone and go, oh my gosh, it really doesn’t get better than this. She’s just incredible,” Judd says. “And then I found out that Pete was really good friends with her and, again, I thought, well, they’ll have a natural chemistry because they’ve known each other a long time.”
David Sirus, a co-writer and producer, adds that “the way that she harnessed that Staten Island accent was so amazing.” Bel hails from the United Kingdom, so she already had an accent herself. Nailing the Staten Island accent was key to the movie’s authenticity.
“It’s like very splashy,” Bel says. She notes that if just add a lot of “attitude” when you’re talking, it just “comes naturally.”
The synopsis for the film reads: “Scott has been a case of arrested development ever since his firefighter father died when he was seven. He’s now reached his mid-20s having achieved little, chasing a dream of becoming a tattoo artist that seems far out of reach. As his ambitious younger sister (Maude Apatow) heads off to college, Scott is still living with his exhausted ER nurse mother (Marisa Tomei) and spends his days smoking weed, hanging with the guys — Oscar (Ricky Velez), Igor (Moises Arias) and Richie (Lou Wilson) — and secretly hooking up with his childhood friend Kelsey (Bel Powley).”