There’s a version of Chiara King that millions of people think they know – the funny, relatable creator who turns dating disasters and everyday chaos into scroll-stopping content. Then there’s the version she reveals at the Venice Film Festival, sitting down with us on the sidelines of her collaboration with Miu Miu: someone still learning to believe she belongs in the rooms she’s fought her way into, someone who has turned real fear into a fierce new chapter of her career.
That chapter is “The Influencer Project”, Chiara’s feature film acting debut: a horror-thriller that hits uncomfortably close to home. While shooting a story about the dark side of online fame, she was living through her own: a stalker whose threats bled into her days on set, blurring the line between the character’s fear and her own. What emerges in our conversation is not a polished promotional soundbite, but something rawer – a reflection on fashion as self-expression, on the naivety of oversharing in the social media age, on therapy, resilience, and the strange alchemy by which our worst experiences can become the source of our greatest strength.
So, first of all, how is it to be here in Venice?
It’s amazing. The last time I went to Venice, I was 12, when I was singing in the school choir, and we sang in the cathedral in Piazza San Marco!
Wow! You do a lot of stuff – I mean, you do almost everything.
Yeah, it feels a bit overwhelming at the same time, so yeah, I try.
And you’re here with Miu Miu – how does it feel to be here with such an important voice? I mean, Miu Miu isn’t just a fashion brand, they do so many important things in art too. How does it feel to be here with them, and how would you like to leave your mark on this world?
Honestly, it’s hard to believe I’m here with Miu Miu, even though I have to tell myself I deserve to be here. There’s still this imposter syndrome – like, why did they choose me? I probably shouldn’t say this, but it’s true: sometimes I don’t believe I deserve to be somewhere. But then I have to change that narrative and tell myself: no, I deserve to be here, I’m funny, I’m relatable, I bring something to the brand. As much as I love the luxury world, sometimes it’s nice to bring relatability and fun to a brand like Miu Miu – it’s a fun, young brand, for young girls and guys, for anyone who wants to wear it. Having me be part of the brand really aligns, because I’m fun, I love fashion, and I love connecting with people.
“Having me be part of the brand really aligns, because I’m fun, I love fashion, and I love connecting with people.”
Yes, and they’re really about connecting people too.
Especially connecting women, which is why I love Miu Miu, because of things like the literary club they did during Milan Design Week, which was very pro-female. I’m very pro-women, so it’s just such a great fit.
And talking about feeling comfortable in your own skin – does fashion play a role in that too? For me it’s like armor: if I don’t feel comfortable in the dress or whatever, I lose my power for the day.
Fashion is simply a form of expressing yourself, and that’s why I love it, it’s not generic, and so many people can style the same outfit in completely different ways. It’s supposed to be fun. Fashion isn’t that serious, even though people love to think it is. I love how playful it is, how you can express yourself through color, through different designs and shapes – personality plays a huge part in fashion. I think it’s the best way to show who you are as a person through what you put on your body. I love that I get to work in an industry where I can play with different characters every day, almost like acting – one day I want to be a preppy girl, the next a rock star. You really embody the character you’re wearing when you wear different clothes, and I love playing with different types of clothing – I don’t like sticking to just one genre.
Talking about your next project: “The Influencer Project” is your feature film acting debut. What made you want to do this project so much?
No one’s ever seen me properly act before. I think with social media, a lot of it is actually acting – like doing funny skits, relatable comedy about dating. It’s all acting, because you’re putting on a character for people. Social media isn’t fully me – part of it is me, and part of it is acting, playing a role, playing a character. The reason I chose “The Influencer Project” is because I’d never done a horror or a thriller – something completely different, actually the opposite of what I am on social media. If I wanted to break through into acting, I felt the perfect opportunity was to show something completely abnormal compared to my usual day-to-day content. Because if I’d done comedy or something similar, then people would think, “Oh, it’s just like TikTok and Instagram,” and I feel like people wouldn’t take me as seriously. Whereas this role forced me to meet myself in a way that was scary, that had a lot of fear factor, and I had to put my whole soul and energy into a role completely different from my everyday self.
“This role forced me to meet myself in a way that was scary, that had a lot of fear factor”
I love horror movies, I love thrillers, they’re my favorite. This movie is a horror-thriller, I guess, where you get the suspense, but it’s not too much.
Yeah, it’s not too much. It’s real – that’s why it’s scary.
And something very similar happened to you personally, right?
Yes, so I had a situation where I had a stalker, and it actually happened while we were filming the movie, so it was really triggering at times. I had a therapist helping me not let it affect my personal life, because I was going through a lot – I’ve never been so scared in my entire life, I’ve never woken up in the middle of the night vomiting out of anxiety and fear of what this person was going to do next. It was very important for me to have support from friends and family, but also a professional, while I was filming, because it was something affecting my real life – and it still affects me today.
I can imagine. How much of the film was scripted versus you reacting in the moment?
A lot of it was improvised, most of it, actually. We obviously had the scenes set out, a loose script, but it was really nice for me to improvise how Chiara would react – not me, the person, but Chiara the character, who is also very different from me. I had to think in my head: how does Chiara react in this situation? Would she play the victim, or take the power into her own hands and face the problem head-on, which is what Chiara King, the character, ends up doing, something I in real life would never do, I’m too scared. So, it was really interesting to play with the character of Chiara King, and I actually learned a lot from playing her, because she’s a lot stronger than me in real life. It was really cool to play into that.
And also almost an inspiration. What was the most challenging scene to shoot, maybe emotionally?
Emotionally, I’d say the most challenging scene was the club scene, when the stalker, the “Kingslayer”, comes up behind me while I’m partying, and whispers in my ear something my actual stalker said to me, in the exact same way, right behind my ear: “Are you lost, baby girl?” That whole scene really triggered me, to the point where I felt like it was happening to me again. We went outside afterward and I was vomiting, I was actually sick, not acting. You know, that was probably the scariest thing that person ever did to me, physically assault me. For that to be played out exactly in the film – the producers wanted the scene to show Chiara being scared, but I didn’t actually know he was going to say that line, so it caught me completely off guard. I don’t have an issue with the producers, but it was probably the hardest thing I had to do emotionally, because it was so close to home – exactly how it happened to me, except I had to relive it again and again.
“COMPLETELY OFF GUARD”
The movie explores the price of broadcasting your life to millions of strangers who then become your community too. Has making it changed how you think about your own relationship with sharing online?
A hundred percent. After the situation with the stalker, I realized how naive I’d been before – I would post my live location, where I was, which hotel I was staying at, which restaurant I was going to. After it happened, I couldn’t do that anymore, because you don’t know if it’s going to be one person or more, if this person is sending someone to hurt you, if it’s a team effort or just one individual. My situation was one person, but I don’t actually know the full extent of it – whether others were involved. So yeah, I definitely learned that I’d been very naive, and I think we all tend to be, thinking that when we post on social media, no one’s really watching, because you just see a number on a screen and don’t equate it to real people. We don’t grasp that 100 people watching a story isn’t nothing – imagine 100 people in a room right now, that’s a lot of people – and it only takes one to destroy your life. It really put things into perspective for me, in terms of looking after myself, but also encouraging my friends to look after themselves too. I have friends with no followers who’ve been harassed, stalked by some random guy – my best friend has fewer than 200 followers, and a man used to go to the restaurant she visits every day and just wait there. So, it doesn’t only happen to people with followers, it happens to everyone, and that’s really sad. Social media can be a great place, but it’s also so dangerous, for so many reasons.
Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for the new generations born into social media – I know what it means to live without it, and then I had it. I’m 36 years old, so I know what it meant, and it was beautiful – I’m not saying I don’t love social media – but I think about young people now who don’t know how to exist without it.
If I have a daughter one day, would I want her to live my life, grow up on social media? The answer is no. As grateful as I am for my career, and for all the amazing opportunities it’s created, it’s also been a very scary place. No one in this world is built to handle thousands and thousands of people telling you to kill yourself, hating on you, trying to follow you.
And is there something new you discovered about yourself through this project?
Yes. The first thing is that I am way stronger than I think, and I believe everyone is stronger than they think, until they go through something difficult in life. You don’t realize how strong you are until you actually get through something you never thought you could survive. I know this sounds crazy, but I’m actually so “grateful” that awful situation happened to me, because if I hadn’t gone through it, I don’t think I could have performed as well in the film. In a way, art imitated life, and life imitated art – it’s funny how the world works, but in the end it all worked out, and I believe God has my back, has everyone’s back, or whatever you believe in. It’s about finding the best thing in the worst situation. I’m so grateful I was able to put my acting skills to the test too, because I’d never been in a film where I was strangled, tortured, climbing 50 meters up in the sky on a rope – it was all safe, of course, but things I’d never done, never thought I’d do, like my own stunts. I never imagined I’d be doing that, and I’m just so grateful for the opportunity. Of course I’d love to do more, but even if I never did this again, I’m grateful I got to discover how strong I am.
“I am way stronger than I think, and I believe everyone is stronger than they think”
That’s beautiful. I think, like you said, sometimes life puts you in a situation, and before it happens you think, “if that happened to me, I’d die, I couldn’t cope, I couldn’t go to work” – maybe even with loss, when you lose someone.
Yes, you never think it’s going to happen to you. And then it happens to you.
When it happens, you realize – but like you said, everything has a meaning.
I think everything happens for a reason, and no matter what you’re going through in life, it’s all happening for you, even if you don’t realize it yet. My therapist told me, when I was going through the worst time: “Chiara, this is a gift, it may be a badly wrapped gift, but you won’t know how much of a gift it is until time shows you.” And now I realize it really was a gift, because the most incredible actors, the most incredible people I’ve ever met, have been through the hardest lessons, and it’s made them so much wiser.
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
I’d say the bravest thing I’ve ever done is speaking up about having a stalker, because fear always silences people, always stops you from speaking the truth and taking the power back into your own hands. What I learned most from playing Chiara in “The Influencer Project” is that you have to face things head-on – if you want things to change, if you want the world to change, the only way is by speaking your own truth, and hoping others learn from your experience. It’s very scary, because by speaking about this, I know this person is going to hear that I’m talking about it, and I’m scared they’ll hurt me again. But I’ve been silenced for two years now, and I’m not going to be silenced anymore. There are a lot of women and men who’ve been through the same thing – assault, harassment – and stay quiet out of fear. But things won’t change if you stay silent.
Fear immobilizes you – it’s difficult to move, to speak. And it’s almost like, after two years, you don’t get used to it exactly, but it becomes more comfortable to stay in the situation.
It’s more comfortable not saying anything, but I’m not going to change anything in my life or in other people’s lives by staying quiet.
When do you feel the safest, and when do you feel the most confident?
I feel safest when I’m with my family, with my mum and dad. And I feel most confident when I speak to myself kindly, when I tell myself I’m deserving of love, that I’m the luckiest girl in the world, even if I don’t quite believe it. But even if you don’t believe it, if you look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am so confident, I am so lucky to be alive, I am so powerful, I am magnetic, I am abundant” – it actually rewires your brain. I feel so much more confident when I speak to myself kindly.
Yes but it’s so difficult though.
It’s so difficult, but you have to fake it. I’ll look at myself in the mirror and say, “you are so beautiful,” while thinking, “I’m so ugly.” But the more you tell yourself something, the more you start to believe it. If you keep telling yourself “you’re fat, you’re fat, you’re fat,” you’re going to believe it more. If instead you keep telling yourself “you’re so inspiring, you’re so creative,” eventually you’ll start to believe that instead.
“The more you tell yourself something, the more you start to believe it.”
Okay, I’ll call you if I need that.
What book is currently on your bedside table?
Right now “Shantaram” but it’s a true story about an Australian guy who escapes prison and goes to work as a slum doctor in the slums of Bombay/Mumbai. It’s about his incredible life, so inspiring, and it’s kind of linked not to exactly what I went through, but to the idea that the strength you gain from doing hard things is so worth the difficulty, because of the strength that comes afterward.
Last question, what’s your happy place?
My happy place is in Mexico, a retreat that my friend owns, where I actually don’t use my phone, so I’m off my phone for 10 days straight. It’s a place where I can read, meditate, and really come back to myself when this world I’m in gets too busy and noisy. It’s my safe space. Mexico is the best place in the world. They call it “the umbilical cord of Mother Earth,” and it really feels like it.
What do you think?