Among the new titles coming to streaming this week is an action-packed thriller where Viola Davis plays a U.S. president who must fight for the globe by using her skilled military background at the annual G20 summit. And, after I previously learned from Viola Davis’ stunt double for The Woman King that she insisted she do just about everything for the 2022 war movie, I was, of course, curious how the Oscar winner handled Amazon Prime’s G20.
A couple of years ago, Jénel Stevens (who also worked on the Black Panther stunt team) told CinemaBlend that Davis did 95 to 98% of her stunts and “was down for everything basically.” When I asked G20’s director Patricia Riggen about how Davis balanced things out with the stunt team, here's what she said.
A couple of years ago, Jénel Stevens (who also worked on the Black Panther stunt team) told CinemaBlend that Davis did 95 to 98% of her stunts and “was down for everything basically.” When I asked G20’s director Patricia Riggen about how Davis balanced things out with the stunt team, here's what she said.
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00:00You know, Viola came already, of course, super fit because she had done the Woman King.
00:05So she had a lot of that already on her.
00:08But what we did is a lot of training in terms of weapons and knives and pants in the kitchen.
00:17You know, just other things that she was not an expert in.
00:21And that was really fun.
00:23And, you know, she did use, we did use a double.
00:26We actually had two different doubles for different things because it was a very complicated shoot.
00:33And it was a lot of moving parts, a lot of scenes.
00:36And so it was just useful to have them.
00:40But most of the scenes are very close contact.
00:42So it's her face.
00:43She's doing this.
00:45Did she actually, like, throw you down?
00:47Or was that movie magic?
00:49She threw Manny down.
00:52She threw my double down.
00:53But we, you know, we did a lot of training for that.
00:58We did a lot of jujitsu.
00:59So all the other stuff prior to that toss, that throw, is us.
01:03And by the way, throughout the film, we got to do a lot of our own stunts.
01:07If it was too crazy, then yes, we'd have a double come in and do that for us and make us look great.
01:11And we had an amazing stunt team, by the way.
01:14But, you know, that was a great way during that training to kind of develop that relationship between us,
01:19between, you know, Madam President and Manny.
01:21You know, we really get to be physical with each other.
01:23And in that process, it immediately develops an intimacy, you know, and go, okay.
01:28And then I wanted to just make sure she felt and knew that I had her back, as Manny does,
01:34and would just continue to show off her in any way.