Inde Navarrette, the Latina star of ‘Obsession,’ is still trying to ‘feel her feet’

Surrounded by colorful candles, crystals and all manner of mystical artifacts, the popular — but thankfully fictional — One Wish Willow sits on a shelf protected under a glass dome, like the magical rose in “Beauty and the Beast,” inside the Green Man Store in Burbank.

The wish-granting branch packaged in an eye-catching box is flanked by framed photos of “Obsession,” the small-scale horror film turned global box-office smash to which it is central. The shrine to this movie prop is here because the esoteric shop — or portal to the otherworldly, depending on who you ask — served as the filming location where Bear (Michael Johnston), a young man in unrequited love, purchased the One Wish Willow.

Nikki, the object of Bear’s desire who becomes disturbingly infatuated with him after he makes a dangerous wish, is played by Inde Navarrette, an actor who quickly went from struggling to find work to becoming one of the most sought-after names in Hollywood after the film’s May release. She is now attached to multiple high-profile projects.

Throughout the whirlwind of the movie’s production and release, however, Navarrette, 25, had never actually visited the store. Her character has no scenes here, but the transaction made inside these walls deeply impacts her. On a September morning, she finally made it in.

“We brought Nikki to where it all began, and she feels good in here,” Navarrette tells me with a hearty chuckle at the space that’s become a destination for “Obsession” obsessives.

Under a black coat, the petite and poised Navarrette sits on a stool. She is mostly soft-spoken— except for when she belts out a laugh — and straddles the glamour of a major star on the rise with the unpretentious candidness of someone still thrilled by the ride she’s on.

Only a year ago, after “Obsession” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and before it grossed $519.4 million worldwide, her professional reality looked much different.

“I was definitely not in the position that I am now,” Navarrette says. “I was really trying to find new work, and I wasn’t getting many jobs, but now I think everything’s changed and I’m really happy that ‘Obsession’ showed people what I’m capable of.”

Prior to the surprise blockbuster horror hit, Navarrette’s supporting role in the series “Superman & Lois” was her most notable credit. Playing Nikki, who, under the spell of the One Wish Willow displays extreme emotions, was exactly the kind of acting challenge she needed. When it came, it felt like kismet.

“I was like, ‘This is perfect. There’s so much to play with here. And even if it doesn’t go big, people at least can look back at this movie and say, “She could play girl next door, she could play crazy, she could play deep, she could play this or that.” ’ It’s just a well of ranges,” she says.

Navarrette says she only became fully aware of the phenomenon “Obsession” had become when those closest to her reacted positively.

(Etienne Laurent/For De Los)

“I didn’t realize until the massive wave on social media and my little brother, who’s 18, and his friends being like, ‘Dude, that’s kind of sick.’ Because everything else they’ve kind of been like, ‘Pfft, whatever, that’s cool.’ [Laughs]. But this was the first thing that excited him. I was like, ‘Oh OK, this means something.’ ”

Navarrette’s Mexican American father is a U.S. Marine and her Australian mother is a hairstylist. Though born in Tucson, she grew up in the Central California city of Visalia. Her parents divorced during her early childhood, and Navarrette remembers first telling her mother she wanted to be an actress around age 5.

“I’ve lived a life where I needed to understand emotion at a very young age,” she says. “And I feel like I found that home in movies. I’ve always just been an emotional child.”

Her family imbued in her a love for cinema. Her Mexican American loved ones enjoy comedies like “Jackass” and “White Chicks,” while her more religious Australian relatives watch the Oscars and love classics like “Funny Girl.” That Navarrette turned out to be a precocious movie watcher might be the result of her exposure to a wide spectrum of films.

“Emotion is a language that I understand very well and that’s why I liked adult movies growing up and I’d get in trouble, movies like ‘Leon the Professional’ or ‘Gladiator’ or ‘Seven,’ ” she recalls. “I just felt like kids’ movies didn’t fully give me what I felt like I was experiencing on the inside.”

Horror movies also came into her purview by way of her Mexican American family, in particular her aunt Maria. “When I tell you growing up at my tía’s house all of the horror movies that would be playing, and I had a friend in high school whose mom was really into brujería and we would watch Rob Zombie and we’d talk about the spirits in the house,” Navarrette recalls.

“I would love to know the history as to why Latinos love horror so much,” she adds.

When “Obsession” premiered, Navarrette went with her tía Maria and other family members to watch at the movie theater in Visalia she frequented growing up. Tía Maria offered her precious validation.

“The whole time she was, ‘Mija, this is good,’ ” Navarrette recalls. “It was really nice because she’s the horror woman. She’s tatted up — I have a biker family. She has the devil on this arm and the angel on this arm. She’s a punk Chicana.”

As a kid in Visalia, which is more than half Latino, Navarrette never questioned her pride in her identity as a Latina. It was only when as a teenager she and her family moved to Redondo Beach, with the intention of being closer to Los Angeles in order for her to pursue an acting career, that others disputed her Latinidad.

“My family doesn’t speak Spanish because we’re very ingrained in what is considered America,” she explains. “My abuelito’s side is also Native American.”

In the wake of the “Obsession” craze, however, Navarrette has reveled in seeing Latinos embrace her.

“Whenever I started having people question it, I started questioning it myself like, ‘I don’t speak Spanish, but neither do my dad and my abuelito.’ But my abuelito had dark skin. My dad is darker than me, and because I’m lighter, it’s questioned, which I understand. And there’s also a privilege that comes with that,” she says. “But I’m very proud of it and it made me really happy to have people pull me in and be like, ‘No, she is Latina and she’s ours.’”

Navarrette is aware of the memes that refer to Nikki as a “toxica”— a popular term among Latinos online to describe a woman who displays toxic behavior in romantic relationships — but she doesn’t believe that applies to her character. If anything, she felt the label used her identity as a Mexican American woman, whether maliciously or not, to reduce Nikki to a stereotype.

“Whenever I first saw that I kind of cried because it made me really sad that people took my pride in being Mexican and saw it as, ‘Let’s degrade this person’s experience,’ ” Navarrette says. “There’s this idea that Latina women are just so intense and so crazy. But let’s look a lot deeper than that. It did hurt my feelings. But I can understand where they’re coming from. It’s a surface level thing to say and sometimes jokes are just that.”

At 13, after showing an affinity for acting at a YMCA summer camp, Navarrette landed her first acting job, a commercial where they made her drive a car. Her aptitude for drama came naturally. And though she has never taken formal acting classes, Navarrette credits her seventh-grade English teacher, Ms. Patton, for instilling in her to “feel her feet.”

“I know that sounds strange, but acting is never just in your head, it’s in your feet, it’s in your knees, depending on the person that you are,” she explains.

There’s an instinctual quality to how Navarrette has navigated her career thus far. The name she uses professionally, Inde, for example, is a nickname her grandfather and her mother gave her as a child, because of her independence. “My abuelito never called me Danielle at all. He called me Inde,” she says.

When it came time to fill out her SAG documents, she went with that name instead of Danielle or Fabiola, her middle name. “I felt closer to Inde because it felt more like me,” she adds. “I don’t know whether or not it was because I was called that every single day by my mom and by my abuelito, who I would see after school, because my mom still had to work.”

Now after the wallop of success thanks to “Obsession” and with Oscar-buzz on her name, Navarrette is able to be choosier about the roles she takes. She believes she’s earned the audience’s trust with Nikki and wants to preserve that bond moving forward.

“I want them to see me as somebody that they can trust with characters,” she says. “Even if they don’t necessarily like the movie or the character, they know that it’s something that I really loved and that I could chameleon myself into rather than just a paycheck.”

In the future, Navarrette intends to write and direct her own films, but for now, she is preparing to play Rogue, a misunderstood mutant who absorbs others’ powers by touching them, in filmmaker Jake Schreier’s upcoming “X-Men” movie.

“I’m doing everything humanly possible because I love that character. I’ve studied that character. I want to do it justice for myself, for Jake, for what they want to portray and also for what I as a fan want her to be like. I’m doing everything, exclamation point.”

When I suggest that she has probably been asked countless times if she would pick up a One Wish Willow and ask for something, Navarrette explains people just assume she would: “I actually haven’t been asked if I would use it. I’ve been asked what I would wish for.”

“I don’t think I would because I have a very big complex about not feeling deserving of something until it happens. Like with the Oscar buzz, I don’t consider it a thing until it happens,” she adds. “That’s also a way of protecting myself. I wouldn’t wish for anything. I would work hard for it and see if it happens. I hope, not wish. It’s different.”

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