LOS ANGELES, June 5 (UPI) -- Ana de Armas says her action scenes in Ballerina, in theaters Friday, were customized for her abilities. De Armas plays Eve, a trainee at the Ruska Roma ballet assassin school that first appeared in the John Wick films.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, de Armas, 37, described training with the 87eleven action team. The 87eleven stunt coordinators designed Ballerina scenes based on her progress.
"We had plenty of time to let me go through the process of first getting stronger, getting an idea of what combat and fighting was," de Armas said. "Just as I was getting better and better, [they'd] just start building the scenes around my strengths and best things I could do."
De Armas said she is surprised she has become an action hero, starring in the James Bond film No Time to Die, The Grey Man, Ghosted and now Ballerina.
"I never thought I was going to do action," she said. "I didn't think I was athletic enough or strong enough."
The 87eleven team, whose founders doubled for Keanu Reeves in The Matrix and train the actor for John Wick, showed de Armas how to maximize her advantages.
"I didn't know I was capable of doing it," she said. "Now I definitely love it and I enjoy it very much."
John Wick (Reeves) himself gives Eve some advice when they cross paths. She looks up to the older assassin at the beginning of her career.
Ballerina director Len Wiseman said focusing on a character choosing to become an assassin makes Eve's story unique to John's, which begins when he is already the legendary Baba Yaga.
"What drives a person to become an assassin?" Wiseman, 52, asked. "How [expletive] up is your situation, your trauma and everything in your life to get to the point where that's what you are dedicating your time to?"
Eve's story begins when she is a child. Her father rescued her from The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), the leader of a tribe shunned even by the High Table of assassins to which John belongs.
Continental hotel manager Winston (Ian McShane) took Eve in and sent her to train at Ruska Roma.
The curriculum includes as much fight and weapons training as it does pointe shoes. De Armas only got to film one ballet scene in Ballerina.
"I did some ballet just for fun when I was little," she said. "I still remembered how it's done, so I did some of it."
Eve seeks Winston's help again as an adult when she checks into the Continental, hoping to find The Chancellor and avenge her family. Reprising his role from the John Wick films, McShane, 82, said he enjoys Winston's mysterious connection to John and Eve.
"They're my two favorite assassins if you like," McShane said. "All I know is that he's known both the Wick character and the Eva Macarro character since they were kids."
Ballerina introduces additional characters standing between Eve and The Chancellor, including Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno), an assassin The Chancellor sends to intercept Eve.
Moreno, 44, also starred in 2023's Silent Night, from the producers of John Wick and Ballerina, and directed by John Woo. Between the two films, Moreno said she appreciated the work that goes into bringing such visceral action to life.
"I appreciate good camera movement," Moreno said. "In this movie, there is a bunch of camera movements, the dancing that they did, that I really appreciate."
Eve also pursues Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), a man with a hefty bounty on his head, who has a mysterious connection to The Chancellor. Reedus, 56, said he filmed Ballerina while still in France for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.
"I'm used to sort of a sloppy fighting style," Reedus said. "This is very choreographed. There's a lot of pieces, a lot of things going on around you at the same time that rely on you to be on time."
Ballerina is not Wiseman's first time entering an established franchise. After creating the Underworld films, he directed 2007's Live Free or Die Hard.
The director noted his sequel came 12 years after Die Hard with a Vengeance, so that franchise had been dormant before its revival. Wiseman was sensitive to the notion that John Wick is current.
"There's always the audience member in the back of my decisions," Wiseman said. "What I would want to see that had a familiar feel, tone, world and then the expectation of what's new?"
Having appeared in all five theatrical films, McShane said he did not feel any difference between the John Wicks and Ballerina. He noted that many of the producers and stuntpeople remained from John Wick.
Both, McShane said, commit to showing audiences the kind of excitement they can't endure in real life, and a level of violence most real people would hope to avoid.
"People say, 'Why do audiences go to the movies?'" McShane said. "Well, because they're something that they'll never experience in their own life. That's why I go to movies."
The previous four films' worth of mythology for the High Table and Continental hotels helped new cast members too. Though The Chancellor and his tribe are new, Moreno said she built her new character off the back of the John Wick franchise.
"I think John Wick did a great job in building a very solid ground for any actor to step in and just keep building from it," Moreno said. "But, John Wick did the whole groundwork."
John himself advises Eve not to follow his path, to get out while she still can. For the movie's sake, Eve doesn't listen but de Armas understood her youthful swagger too.
"I think like all young people do, I did at some point too in my life, we just don't listen to advice of the people that really know," de Armas said. "She's not afraid so she doesn't shy away from trouble."
