Actress Ana de Armas had to scream before she could kill in John Wick movie spin-off Ballerina

SINGAPORE – Actress Ana de Armas was making all the right moves when it came to the fight scenes in the movie From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina, but something was missing. 

“I would do the stunts, but it felt too choreographed. The stunt team said, ‘Come on, you have to start getting into character, to feel her rage and passion,’” she tells The Straits Times in a Zoom interview. 

The team offered a suggestion: screaming.

“They taught me how to scream myself ready. We screamed at one another. It became my way to get in the right mindset. The energy would wake me up in the morning, or at 3am, when we were shooting at night. I would just start jumping up and down and screaming, to get the blood flowing,” says de Armas, 37.

Once the crew members heard her screams, they readied the cameras.

The vocal exercise worked. Viewers will see the Cuban-Spanish star punching, shooting and throwing grenades in Ballerina, which opens in Singapore cinemas on June 5. 

She is no stranger to action movies, having appeared in the Netflix thriller The Gray Man (2022) and the James Bond film No Time To Die (2021).

As its full title suggests, Ballerina is set in the assassin-filled fantasy universe made popular through the John Wick films (2014 to 2023).

This is the first movie spin-off after four films in the franchise. It is set in the period between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023).

De Armas plays Eve Macarro, daughter of Javier (David Castaneda), a hitman murdered by a highly secretive cult led by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne).

Winston (Ian McShane), manager of the Continental Hotel – a haven for hired killers – takes the child (Victoria Comte, who plays the younger Eve) under his wing. He sends her to the Ruska Roma, a ballet academy run by the Director (Anjelica Huston).

The Director’s aim: to mould students into adults who are as good at killing as they are in dance. Years later, Eve sets out on a mission of vengeance. 

As the lead character in Ballerina, de Armas says there were two duties on her shoulders: to be strong enough to perform the big fight scenes and achieve that strength safely. 

“Everything I’ve done before has been a step towards getting to this place. With each movie, the complexity of the action increased.

“But the challenge in Ballerina had no comparison with anything I’ve done before. The training was three to four months, every day, many hours a day – combat training, handling weapons. There was a level of commitment and discipline I didn’t know before. All of a sudden, I was training like an athlete,” she says.

But she had to listen to her body and learn to not push it too far. She would not only be harming herself, but she would also be putting everyone else’s jobs at risk. 

“I had to take care of my body – nutrition, diet, self-care, therapy, chiropractors, all kinds of people taking care of my body. Because if I get injured or something happens, the movie stops for a week or two and we can’t afford that. I had to be so committed to the project and to what I had to do,” she says. 

Keanu Reeves, as the gifted titular assassin John Wick, appears in Ballerina in a pivotal role.

It is not de Armas’ first collaboration with the 60-year-old Canadian actor. Her career began in Spain and Cuba, before she moved to Hollywood in her mid-20s.

One of her first English-speaking roles was in the psychosexual thriller Knock Knock (2015), playing one of two stranded women who terrorise Reeves’ character in his home. 

She was then not yet fluent in English and had memorised the dialogue phonetically. She would, however, be fluent by the time she was cast in films like science-fiction epic Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and mystery thriller Knives Out (2019), and took the title role in the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde (2022), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. 

It felt good to be reunited with Reeves on Ballerina 10 years later, de Armas says. This time, however, she was not only more mature, but her grasp of English also helped her to understand him better, allowing him to be more relaxed and natural as an actor, she says. 

“I loved working with Keanu on Ballerina. I have so much respect and admiration for him as a person and actor. I was already a big fan of the John Wick movies. Being back on set with him, I could tell he was more comfortable in Ballerina than he was in Knock Knock. It was a beautiful full circle for both of us to reconnect, because so much has changed in our lives since then,” she says. 

American actor Norman Reedus, speaking to ST in a separate online interview, talked about his role as Daniel Pine, the estranged son of the Chancellor. 

“Daniel’s child became a target because of who his family is. Now, he’s willing to fight everyone – not just his father, but also endless levels of assassins – to protect his child’s innocence.

“When Eve arrives, he’s suspicious at first. But since she’s not shooting, he realises she might be able to help. Eve becomes an angel, an unexpected salvation when he’s cornered and desperate to protect his child,” says Reedus, 56. 

Reedus got his breakthrough playing survivor-protagonist Daryl Dixon on 11 seasons of zombie horror series The Walking Dead (2010 to 2022). He is now starring in spin-off series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (2023 to present). 

Reedus and Reeves are motorcycle enthusiasts who were out riding in Los Angeles when they first met by accident at a traffic light, as Reedus recounted on talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2024, without specifying the year.

They quickly bonded over their shared love of two-wheelers, with Reeves eventually appearing as a guest on the sixth season of the Reedus-hosted motorcycle docuseries Ride With Norman Reedus (2016 to present).

He calls Reeves an “honest person and a good hero”.

In real life, the Hollywood superstar is just like the type of hero he tends to portray on screen – the one who never calls attention to himself and wins through quiet determination, says Reedus.

Reeves is “just a guy getting through life... he’s doing the work and you root for him. I think people naturally root for Keanu in real life because he’s that guy”, adds Reedus. 

American director Len Wiseman, who makes his John Wick debut with Ballerina, received some advice about the franchise from Reeves.

The 52-year-old is best known for his work on the Kate Beckinsale-headlined vampire-werewolf action horror film franchise Underworld (2003 to 2016) and the remake of science-fiction thriller Total Recall (2012). 

Speaking to ST while seated next to de Armas, he remembers asking Reeves a question. 

“I was putting together a shot and asked Keanu, ‘Would it be weird if you looked down into this lens for a portion of the dialogue?’” says Wiseman. 

The actor then offered the director the mantra that has kept the John Wick enterprise going since 2014. “He said, ‘If it’s cool, it’s not weird.’”