Saleka Shyamalan on Writing Music for Trap Alongside Dad M. Night

Saleka Shyamalan took notes on Taylor Swift’s pop culture impact while creating her character, Lady Raven, and all the original music for her and dad M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, Trap.

“I think Taylor Swift, in terms of her impact in society, was a really interesting factor,” Saleka, 28, exclusively told Us Weekly while discussing the upcoming psychological thriller. “I think in the world of Lady Raven, she’s not as big as Taylor Swift, but I think the idea of how connected her fans feel to her and how going to her concert is such a big moment in their lives and how they feel in the room surrounded by other girls that are loving her songs.”

She continued, “I think that idea was really powerful and the effects that an artist, that a musician, can have on kids, especially and young girls, I think is a beautiful thing. And Taylor Swift is an amazing example of that.”

Saleka stars as Lady Raven in Trap, the pop star performing at a massive concert that is being used to catch an infamous serial killer known as The Butcher (Josh Hartnett), who has taken his daughter to see the show.

The film is written and directed by Saleka’s dad, M. Night, with Saleka composing, performing and producing all the original music which features special guests Kid Cudi, Russ, and Amaarae. The soundtrack boasts 14 original songs, each crafted specifically to the script and narrative of the film by blending Saleka’s classical piano training with her distinct dark-pop-R&B production and tonality.

When it came to crafting Lady Raven’s discography, Saleka — who studied music production and composition at Brown University — said she pulled from both her own life and that of her character’s in hopes of making the music an amalgamation of real and imagined.

“It is very much myself and I wanted to make an album that I felt connected to and that I loved, so I tried to find connective tissue between me and Lady Raven,” she explained. “[I] also [wanted to pull from] what’s going on in the movie for each song and take inspiration from that but make it lyrics that I would like to sing and that I’d have fun with, hopefully getting to sing these songs for the rest of my life and feel connected to them.”

Saleka also turned to Hartnett’s character — a.k.a Cooper a.k.a The Butcher — to allow the music to sync up with his story arc and follow along “with his mindset” as he begins to spiral out of control.

“I wrote to the script almost like how a composer would write a score to the movie,” she explained, noting that if a song didn’t fit the script it didn’t go in the movie. ”So the script was kind of like the architecture and the determining factor of what needed to be there, and then I wrote to that.”

As M. Night — best known for The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village and more — and Saleka have always shared an appreciation for music-driven films, the duo essentially built the concept of Trap during kitchen table conversations. Once the script was finished, Saleka used it as source material to give perspective to the music.

Channeling the acts of a serial killer into chord progressions and finger slides is no easy feat, but beyond Trap’s more horror-esque elements is a story about the love between fathers and daughters. It was those story beats — as well as her relationship with her own father — that Saleka focused on when composing the film’s soundtrack from scratch.

“I think at the core of this movie is this feeling of, ‘Would you still love your dad if he was a serial killer?’ And I think it’s, like, this ultimate kind of unconditional love between parent and child,” she told Us.

Saleka added that her own family is equally as tight-knit: “My parents and my siblings and I are all very close, especially [me and] my dad; he’s a rock of our family,” she said. “My sisters and I are best friends, so we do have that kind of familial love at the core of everything that keeps us grounded and sane while everything else is crazy around [us].”

Saleka, of course, isn’t just singing in Trap — she’s also making her major acting debut. That meant working alongside Hartnett, who Saleka called both an “incredible” actor and the “nicest human.”

“He’s just so humble. It is really wonderful to see, and, like my dad, he’s a master at his craft,” she gushed. “Just watching [him] is an incredible experience. Getting to witness that and seeing how he embodies the character and all the work that goes into it and what he brings to the page that you couldn’t even imagine. It was really magical.”

Working with Hartnett elevated Saleka’s own performance. The multi-hyphenate would watch Hartnett’s “free and spontaneous energy” during rehearsals in order to get “out of [her] head” and into character.

“Sometimes when [Josh] was off camera, he would really help prep me into the emotion of it by just being incredibly dark,” Saleka recalled. “Sometimes when [it isn’t an actor’s coverage], they’re not [performing] full out, but he would go full out for me so I could feel the emotion of it. It’s a really incredible and dedicated thing to do.”

While stepping into Lady Raven’s shoes — with Hartnett and her dad as her guides — was an experience she won’t forget, writing and performing music continues to be Saleka’s first love. It’s something she looks forward to picking back up once Trap hits theaters on Friday, August 2, as she preps for various upcoming projects. But she’s also not ruling out this acting thing, either.

“As soon as the movie comes out, I’ll be back home writing new songs and working on an album, and hopefully I’d love to keep writing for film and television,” she told Us. “I think that that’s a passion of mine. And whether that means that I’m in [the movie] or writing for the background music, I’d love to do all of those things.”

Trap hits theaters on Friday, August 2.