Mary Elizabeth Winstead, star of the upcoming action film Kate, joined Rolling Stone‘s Twitch channel this week to discuss her experience working on the film. The trailer, which premiered exclusively on Rolling Stone, shows Winstead as Kate – an assassin tasked with 24 hours to exact revenge on the enemies who poisoned her. Shot on location across Bangkok and Tokyo, Kate is a high-intensity action film that sees Winstead executing stunts and engaging in hand-to-hand combat over the course of the movie. The cast also includes Tadanobu Asano, Miyavi, Michiel Huisman, Miku Martineau, Jun Kunimura, and Woody Harrelson.
Winstead spoke with Tia Hill about the day of the trailer’s release, and she explained how her role as Kate gave her an opportunity to play a character whose raw emotion and dynamic attitude went hand in hand with her experiences as a woman throughout the film.
“In terms of what I got to wear and the way that I got to carry myself there was nothing really gendered about it. It was just her. It was just who she is. There was no sort of gaze put on it that made it feel any different than that. And that was really refreshing.”
The actor also gave some insight into what it was like filming the myriad of seemingly complicated stunts shown in the trailer — a process made exponentially easier thanks to her previous experiences training for other action films such as Birds of Prey, where she starred as Huntress, alongside Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn.
“I worked with [John Eusebio] … and some of the same stunt time as Kate for Birds of Prey for many months. So by the time Kate came around, it was sort of like, ‘You kind of got the basics; we don’t have to train you the same way we had to train you for Birds of Prey. We can just jump straight into the choreography.’ “
The film, directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan arrives September 10th in theaters and on Netflix.
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