Sicario is a 2015 film that follows the story of an FBI Special Agent recruited by a government task force to take down the brutal leader of a powerful Mexican drug cartel. In the movie, Emily Blunt portrayed Kate Macer — an ambitious FBI Special Agent, who finds herself in a brutal new reality when she teams up with the CIA’s Joint Task Force — to track down a Mexican cartel lieutenant operating in the United States.
Kate Macer’s character played a significant role in the story. But there was an action scene in the movie where Blunt considered her own mortality after being beaten up by her co-star.
Jon Bernthal and Emily Blunt’s Aggressive Fight Sequence
In an interview with the Guardian, Emily Blunt revealed that there was a fight scene with Jon Bernthal, which was so physically demanding for her in Denis Villeneuve’s film. She noted that the filming was tough in the movie, and they all felt sore by the end.
The actress also added that in an “aggressive, brutal fight” with Jon Bernthal, she wanted to make it look so authentic that, at some point, she thought she was going to die. As Blunt said:
“It’s so desperate. We wanted it to be very authentic, to not feel too choreographed, because she thinks she’s going to die, and that’s what it has to look like. It had quite a lasting effect on me – and I’m not someone who takes my work home with me. But I couldn’t sleep after that scene, because it was the embodiment of what would happen naturally: someone of my size would inevitably be overpowered by a person Joe’s size. So when you physically put yourself in that position and you shoot it all day, it has a jarring effect. I felt like my skin was on fire.”
This scene also had a lasting impact on her. After that scene, she couldn’t sleep for about a week because she had “never been in the position of being completely overpowered by a guy.”
When asked by the interviewer, “And you must have thought about your own mortality.” She answered — “For sure. I’d never thought about it in that way before.” But the 40-year-old actress feels that her character in Sicario was a different kind of action heroine, which is more about inner strength.
Kate Macer’s Character was More About Inner Strength
Kate Macer is a woman who makes her way in a man’s world, displaying her vulnerabilities along the way. But ultimately, she transforms herself into a strong female character. Emily Blunt believes that Macer was more about inner strength (via The Sydney Morning Herald):
“To me, Kate is more about a kind of inner strength. So she was a different kind of action heroine, because I think we have seen more of the comic-book kind.”
For the Wild Mountain Thyme star, it was intense to delve into the action world and understand all its gruesome details. At the time of production, she also had conversations with four women from the FBI and underwent FBI training (which influenced the choices she made for her character).
As she said in the same interview with the Guardian, there were some challenging moments that she needed “to be in a really happy place to do good work.” Despite the intense subject matter, the Hollywood star had a great time on the set of the 2015 thriller flick.
Source: The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald
