Fast & Furious 6 is here and you won’t see a faster, more furious movie this year. Gina Carano joins the ensemble as Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson)’s new partner. They enlist the help of Dom (Vin Diesel) and his gang of drivers to help them take down a criminal (Luke Evans) who is working with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). Carano faces off against the resurrected Rodriguez. We spoke with Carano last year for Actionfest, where she was awarded Best Female Action Star, or “Chick” Norris for her work in Haywire. A lot has happened for Carano in the last year, not the least of which is landing a big summer movie franchise as her follow-up to Haywire. We spoke about her developing movie career and thoughts on the fight world she is officially leaving behind.
CraveOnline: I was so excited for you when you booked Fast & Furious 6 because that’s huge.
Gina Carano: Yeah, when I got that call I was just in L.A. in an apartment. To get any job is good but to be part of such a big franchise, I was just like thank you, thank you, dancing around my apartment alone.
What kind of dancing do you do in your apartment alone?
It depends on what kind of call it is and that was a jumping, really dorky child dance.
We sort of get Girlfight vs. Haywire in this movie when you fight Michelle Rodriguez.
Yeah, yeah, of course I wanted to go after Dom and Hobbs. I’d love to have a big fight scene with a massive person like that but when they explained to me the whole premise of Letty coming back and how important it was for my character to be the opposing force there, and how much they wanted to make a really awesome girl fight, I was just like, “Okay, I think that’s fresh. I can definitely deliver that.” Michelle was just so funny. The girl just makes me laugh and I think we had incredible chemistry off screen and it made it more comfortable to push each other and be rough with each other on screen and laugh about it afterwards. Nobody was hurt. It was a lot of fun and a different kind of thing for me.
I think that’s the fight we want to see. When you’re fighting in the tube station, was it a real location or a set they build? Was there any padding in that area?
I think very little padding. Just for insurance purposes, they had to put stuff on corners just in case somebody fell and really, really got hurt. The setup of it was six to seven floors down and it’s an old tube station that’s shut down. The elevators don’t even work so I felt so bad for the whole film crew. I mean, the camera guys, cinematographers and their people had to lug these cameras up and down. There was no bathroom down there so we literally had two days to shoot the fight scene. Going down there, being physical, it’s hot, doing everything of course myself, and if you had to go to the bathroom you had to run up six flights of stairs and time is money. It definitely, I think, adds to the whole feel of the fight and it’s a really cool location too.
Had you seen Girlfight and was it fairly accurate to boxing?
I haven’t seen Girlfight actually but I really respect Michelle. She’s one of those people that you just love to watch on film. You know who Michelle Rodriguez is. You just learn to find a place in your heart for her because you adore seeing her act.
I think we recognize some of your signature moves. You’re still doing all the flips and holds yourself?
Oh yeah, the flying arm bar. Yeah, that was an amazing thing to do. Of course everybody’s talking about insurance with that move and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I am doing that myself. There’s no even question about it. I don’t care what insurance says.” Of course finally, they started letting me do the move on some of the stunt guys, only two weeks before we actually had to shoot the scene. The first time I did it, they were like, “Oh, she does this better than we did it so it’s okay.”
The trick is, to do that on somebody who’s smaller than you, you have to use all of your momentum and it’s pretty much doing a flip with somebody’s arm between your legs. It’s easier to do it on a guy who can handle a certain amount of weight and be stronger, but to do it with somebody who’s small is a little bit trickier. I was so ready and down for that challenge.
Did you ultimately do the arm bar on Michelle?
Oh, of course. I did it over and over and over and I enjoyed it because I could see the cinematographers and everybody around that was watching it was just so excited that an actress is actually doing something like that for real. No CGI, nothing, I was doing that myself and I think that added a little entertainment for the evening. I think that whole fight, whenever I was on set and doing fighting, I think people had a good day because it was fun. To see somebody who was actually doing it and performing in the movie was special.
No, I know you did it yourself, but was Michelle on the receiving end or did you do it against her stuntwoman?
Yeah, that was a stuntwoman.
I’ve actually seen you fake fight more than I’ve seen you real fight just because I didn’t follow every MMA fight. Is that weird to you?
Well, I think it’s awesome because when people see what I’m doing on film and they want to know any background on me, they can see where I come from and why I am this way. I think that’s a compliment to me so if somebody has no idea who I am and they see, “Hey, that was pretty cool and I wonder who is that?” And then go on YouTube and watch some of the stuff that made me who I am, I’m proud of that.
You got to be the lead in your first movie, Haywire. What was it like to share in the ensemble of a Fast and the Furious movie?
It was such a good move for me because I needed to go and get the experience and be a part of a big production. You can speculate all you want on how great of an actress you want to be and how you want to perform but until you get the opportunity, you never know how good you’re going to be on film. So for me, that was just a great experience to go and be around. Now I feel like I have Haywire which is a beautiful, strong, intimate experience that was safe.
Now I have this experience and I did a movie called In the Blood that came directly after Fast 6 which I’m very excited about because it was In the Blood that I started feeling leagues more comfortable acting. I really, really got the bug now. If I had any doubts before, they’re all squashed because now I’m really looking at the scripts that I’m being offered and I’m reading through things. It’s going to be important for me to be a character and to have character development as well as take action to the next level.
We talked about In the Blood last year. That was already on your schedule. So In the Blood waited for you to do Fast & Furious?
It was a little hectic at first. To get released from Fast and the Furious 6 was almost like down to the day I didn’t know if it was going to happen. Finally, thank God, Universal was a really cool studio and they gave me the go ahead to leave and shoot this movie for a month right directly after that. They’ve got such a huge budget on Fast and the Furious 6, if they needed anything, if they needed to get me back, thank goodness they got everything and they signed a waiver so that I could go do In the Blood.
Literally, I wrapped on Fast 6, I got on a plane to Puerto Rico and a day and a half later I was shooting In the Blood for the longest hours of my life, straight for four weeks. I didn’t get home until December 22 which went straight into Christmas and seeing my family, and I’m so glad I did it because I feel like I had such a great experience on Fast 6 and such great opportunity and exposure, but then In the Blood I think, when people start seeing the teaser for that, they’re going to be excited. I think it’ll be a fun movie for people to see the range and where I hopefully will want to go.
Will we still know it’s a Gina Carano movie?
I think you guys are going to be pleasantly surprised. Of course you’re going to know it’s me, but I think you’re going to see me be a character and really get into the feeling of what my character is. I was able to somehow really just go for it. I don’t know if it was such a quick shoot or the chemistry between the cast on In the Blood or what it was. I’ve seen a teaser for it and my heart lights up because I’m like, “That is a movie I would want to go see just to check out, just because it’s so intense and interesting and different.” It’s like okay, if I can do that, if somebody sees that, they might be like, “Okay, she’s really going for it.”
