Michelle Rodriguez loves to throw down for a good on-screen fight, and her latest bruising (for “Furious 7”) comes courtesy of MMA pro Ronda Rousey!
The actress deliberately instructed the real life fighter to not hold back when it came time to film their “Furious” brawl – all for the sake of the movie’s authenticity.
“Hell yeah! I’m not about that girly-girl stuff – like, I want it to be real, I want it to feel genuine,” Michelle told Access Hollywood’s Stephanie Bauer at the “Furious 7” junket in Los Angeles. “And I’m the first one, when I see like a prissy girl running around in a movie doing three drop kicks and 15 people fall to the ground, I’m just like, ‘Foul! Foul!’ I’m the first one in the crowd to boo, throw tomatoes at the screen, you know?
“Nobody wants to see that,” she continued. “Or at least none of my fans would, ’cause I feel like people want to watch a show and they want it to be credible.”
With Hollywood beginning to realize that women are a force to be reckoned with (and should be portrayed as such on-screen), the action star said she feels even more pressure to give it her all.
“I’m all about that. We got a lot to prove ’cause most of the girls, now that we’re in this whole kind of girl power thing where people are starting to realize we need a little balance in power and gender in society period, there’s lots of films where girls kick ass,” she said. “The grand majority of the time, most women who are feminine, or tend to gear towards the lipstick side of things, don’t care about the types of things that most tomboy girls do, which is credibility. You want it to be real, you want to make sure that you’re actually kicking some ass and you want it to be extraordinary –as extraordinary as you can make it. So I definitely put attention to detail in there.”
The actress wasn’t scared to go hand-to-hand with Ronda (who won her most recent UFC fight in 14 seconds!), but she ended up with a few battle wounds.
“Hell no [I wasn’t scared]! I want her to whoop my ass, if anything I’m begging for it!” she laughed. “By the end of it I had two golf ball-sized knots on my head. She kept slamming me against the wall and I forgot to put my hand up, ’cause you forget you’re doing stunts. I was like, ‘Oops, I forgot! There goes one golf ball! Do you think we can get it in two takes?'”
Despite the bumps, Michelle said she’d gladly take a beating from Ronda again.
“I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. She could throw me around all day any day!” she said. “As long as it looks real, I’m happy to get thrown around.”
The 36-year-old star hopes she and Ronda will get the chance to bring more strong female characters to the big screen in the future.
“I think more women like [Ronda] need to be making movies because that’s that military side, that’s that boxing side, that’s that fighter world side, that’s that warrior side,” she explained. “I portray that in films, she is that in real life, and it’d be great if there were more women from that world who came to bring that truth to the big screen, ’cause I see her standing toe-to-toe with half the dudes in this business who pretend to be fighters – and I see her whooping their asses real good!”
“Furious 7” – which took in $68 million on its opening day – is in theaters now.
— Erin O’Sullivan
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