"She wants to be an actress and she auditioned," Elba said. "And you know, it came down to chemistry in the end. You know, my daughter, she was great, but the relationship in the film and the relationship with my daughter was — the chemistry wasn't right for film, weirdly enough. My daughter didn't talk to me for about three weeks."
In the film, Elba plays a man who brings his two daughters, played by Iyana Halley and Leaf Sava Jeffires, to their mother's home country of South Africa following her death. Their trip gets interrupted by an aggressive lion that's hellbent on killing them.
The film's producer Will Packer, who Elba has worked with on numerous other films, said on the "The Breakfast Club" that he was the one who eventually broke the news to Isan that she hadn't gotten the part. He praised Elba for being "tough" on his daughter during the process, saying that he wanted to give his daughter a "shot" but trusted Packer and the film's director, Baltasar Kormákur, to make the best decision for the film.
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"She was very good, very close," Packer said of Isan's performance. "Idris is right, some of the nuances of that real-life relationship sometimes doesn't translate on screen."
Elba said that his daughter was "very gracious" about not getting the role. She later attended the film's premiere alongside her father.
"I'm really proud of her to go through that, you know what I mean," Elba said. "And then not get the role, but still come to the premiere."
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