Los Angeles, March 27 – Hollywood actress Zazie Beetz has shed light on the challenging shoot for ‘They Will Kill You’. The actress revealed that she spent 12-hour days filming in "freezing cold water" for the project.
The 34-year-old actress found the action involving blood splattering and wielding weapons easier to manage than filming in artificial rain for scenes in the high-octane horror-action movie, in which she plays the lead role of Asia Reaves, according to ‘Female First UK’.
Zazie, who filmed the movie during the winter in Cape Town, South Africa, told ‘People’ magazine, "Actually, the most difficult part was the rain scenes, which I wasn't expecting. Those are small scenes throughout the movie, but when you're doing them, it feels like the entire shoot. They have to use cold water because there are rain machines, and because warm water would steam up the camera."
Speaking about how long it took to get the water scenes right, she said, "Days on end because those scenes, the sequences, take about a week, and you're outside from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. in freezing cold water. You're cold. There's nothing else. It doesn't matter how much a movie costs, or how many people are involved. You're just cold. There's something so fundamentally about just being 'cold'."
According to ‘Female First UK’, the intense scenes in the artificial rain meant that Zazie had to fully commit and be present for ‘They Will Kill You’.
She said, "I really had to tap into those moments and be like, 'I want to be here'. In some ways, when you're stripped bare, you can just be like, 'Okay, I'm just being myself'."
Meanwhile, Zazie said it was "very empowering" to take on the lead role of Asia in the movie directed by Kirill Sokolov, in which her alter ego "survives the night at the Virgil, a demonic cult's mysterious and twisted death-trap lair, before becoming their next offering in a uniquely brazen, big-screen battle of epic kills and wickedly dark humour".
She told People, "I think leading something is an incredibly empowering experience. This was my first time being the lead in a movie. (I) really went into it (and wanted the cast and crew) to feel that I wanted to be there, and I wanted to show that I was grateful for this moment and opportunity."
Being a strong leader helped Beetz feel empowered. She said, "I felt very empowered with the idea of, like, 'I need to set aside my nerves or my feelings in order to be fully present every day and just do the work'. And it's easy to just say 'I'm having my feelings'. But I wanted to be a leader, and so, it was a practice in that and a practice in becoming more fully myself. So I'm really grateful for that opportunity. I really feel like it helped me grow in that way."