WithG20, she steps into full blockbuster territory while still managing to keep the story rooted in real-world stakes.
She is really good at this, and she was scary with the villain.
She was right there with Antony Starr.
Image via Prime Video
So I think that’s something that might be surprising.
Not to me, but to a lot of people that she’s a real badass.
Her physicality, the way she handles the weapons, and thenthe authority she has in every moment.
Image by Annamaria Ward
I feel like betweenThe Woman Kingand this, it’s all building towards her fighting John Wick.
But you know what?
With one difference: Viola has such depth in her performance and in her character.
She brings something into the character that she wanted to be there, like needed to be grounded.
From the beginning, I wanted the movie to be real, because G20 is a real thing.
It’s not aJohn Wickscenario where there’s a hotel where killers go.
This is the G20.
It happens every year.
So the first thing was, how do we make this really grounded?
And then at the same time, make a huge, huge Hollywood extravaganza?
So we had technical advisors.
I had an ex-CIA guy advising me.
I had a Ranger.
And then how do you take it over with a terrorist attack?
She doesn’t play.
She will not give you a false line or a Hollywood line.
She needs to bring it from inside.
It’s right there in the movie.
No, 100%.
This kind of thing with a huge audience, with people laughing and clapping and just getting into it?
It’s a two-hour sculpture that I sculpted every single tiny, tiny moment every line, everything.
I can’t not see that.
At the same time, I’m loving the laughs.
I’m loving the claps, the cheering.
It’s very unusual.
It’s not normal for people to react like that.
But I can’t sit straight like an audience member.
I’m just watching everything that I would have done differently.
Hopefully, in ten years I will stop doing that.
Many directors have told me that.
There is a great line in the movie with the word Wakanda.
Who came up with that?
RIGGEN: Our first editor, Emma [Hickox].
We had a line early in the script, first of all, but it was slightly different.
If you were not aBlack Pantherfan, people didn’t realize what we were saying.
So then we were trying to find how to make the line work.
And our editor, Emma, said, You’re from Wakanda.
And that just did it.
It’s a huge laugh.
It’s a great line.
That was the one that brought the house down.
So, I love talking about editing with directors because that’s where it all comes together.
RIGGEN: I’m a huge, huge proponent.
I’m a huge audience proponent.
I love to see how audiences react to it.
So I have a lot of friends and family.
I bring in my worst critics.
I love people that just trash the movie and tell me all the things that would be different.
I love the honesty.
I beg for that.
So I loved doing it with a lot of friends and family, and I keep chipping at it.
It’s really a sculpture.
So I already knew that the movie was playing really well.
We did some test screenings, too.
And people were laughing, people were clapping and cheering in the middle of the movie.
And I heard that that’s very unusual, that sometimes in those test screenings people are practically dead.
That is what my Amazon executive said.
You have to go in there with a mirror and check to see if they’re alive.
So that was a huge compliment.
Now in the premiere, I think everyone was on steroids.
I mean, that was crazy.
The reaction from the audience was just absolutely crazy.
I’m very grateful.
I do want to know, though, did you make any changes?
RIGGEN: Yeah, 100 million changes.
I feel like the movie is written three times before we shoot it.
Then, as we were shooting, we were rewriting a lot.
A lot of the scenes maybe didn’t make sense.
Sometimes the actor comes up with an idea for a line, or you realize you’re missing something.
There’s no logic to a moment.
So we’re fixing what we’re doing.
And then in the editing room, it really gets in a way rewritten one more time.
So there are a hundred million things that changed in this movie.
G20releases on Prime Video April 10.
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