Isaac Powell Says He Wouldn’t Survive ‘Brat Summer’ in ‘The Moment’ (Exclusive)

Isaac Powell may play Lloyd, the effortlessly plugged-in best friend at the center of A24’s The Moment, but in real life, he admits he would not last long in Brat Summer.

“I would not have been able to sustain it the way Lloyd probably did,” Powell told Gayety in an exclusive interview. “Lloyd rode the wave with Charli the whole way. I don’t have the stamina. I don’t like to stay out late. I don’t like crowds.”

Instead? Powell says he’d enjoy the album in far quieter ways. “I would have enjoyed playing it in my car. And at the gym and elsewhere. But no, Lloyd was in the thick of it.”

That contrast fuels much of The Moment, the mockumentary starring Charli XCX as a heightened version of herself navigating pop stardom at full throttle. The film, now in theaters, blends scripted beats with improvisation, following Charli and her inner circle as they attempt to stretch the cultural lifespan of her “Brat” dominance.

Building Lloyd From the Inside Out

For Powell, stepping into Lloyd didn’t require a major transformation.

“I felt like I really understood Lloyd,” he said. “Even from the first time I read the script, I was like, yeah, it’s him. I know who this guy is.”

That clarity made the film’s improvisational style less daunting. “Improv is terrifying if there are any questions about your character that you’ve left unanswered,” Powell explained. “If you know the character really well, there’s nothing scary about it.”

He credited the creative freedom on set, and his castmates, for elevating scenes beyond the page. Powell worked alongside comedic heavy-hitters including Jamie Demetriou and Kate Berlant, both of whom he said made it difficult to keep a straight face.

“I had a really hard time keeping it together watching Alex play Johannes,” he said of Alexander Skarsgård’s eccentric director character. As for Berlant’s scene during a Vogue-style shoot? “We did so many takes of that. There were moments that didn’t make the final edit. She’s really good.”

Despite the laughs, Powell said he rarely broke character. The environment felt natural enough that the line between action and cut blurred. “It almost didn’t feel like we were making a movie,” he said. “It was so lived in.”

The Party That Set the Tone

The first day of filming doubled as a crash course in Lloyd’s personality.

Production kicked off with a large party sequence packed with background actors. Rather than hang back between takes, Powell leaned fully into Lloyd’s social confidence.

“I went into this party thinking Lloyd knows everyone here,” he said. “So that’s how I treated it.”

The result surprised him. “Some of them thought that we had met before,” he recalled. “I was improv-ing as if we had shared history.”

By the end of the night, Powell had made genuine connections. “I learned the power of extroversion,” he said. “I had no reservations. I was just enjoying being around people.” Friends First, Coworkers Second

At the center of the film is Lloyd’s dynamic with Charli, one rooted in friendship rather than hierarchy.

“There’s something really fun and sometimes messy about working with your friends,” Powell said. He approached their connection as sibling-like, filled with playful bickering and blurred boundaries.

That tension mirrors the mockumentary’s larger themes. Powell says he gravitates toward nonfiction storytelling, which made the format especially appealing. “There’s something fascinating about mockumentary,” he said. “The blurring lines between fiction and nonfiction. The fly-on-the-wall POV is very different from formal setups I’m used to.”

He hopes to explore similar projects in the future.

As for 2026? Powell has ambitions beyond the screen, including investing in real estate in the Midwest and Southeast. “Didn’t realize I’d get on here and start talking about my diabolical real estate side hustle,” he joked.

For now, though, audiences can see him riding, and surviving, Brat Summer on screen, even if he’d personally prefer “other tones of green.”

The Moment is out in theaters now.

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