Emmy-nominated actress Nathalie Emmanuel stars in “Army of Thieves,” a prequel to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead.”
However, unlike her role in “Game of Thrones,” Emmanuel’s character, Gwendoline, has some epic fight scenes.
According to Deadline, the prequel occurs during the beginning stages of the zombie outbreak seen in Zack Snyder’s original zombie heist flick. Safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) is hired by a mysterious woman to pull off a heist alongside a crew of aspiring thieves.
Emmanuel spoke to Looper about how she prepared for her fight scenes. She practically took up residence in the gym during her free time.
“It was not like, ‘Oh, you just show up a few days before,’ and learn that it was weeks of practice and rehearsal and trying things out, and then being like, ‘Oh, that looks good but actually we can make it better and changing it slightly,'” Emmanuel explained.
“We were all doing physical training every day. But the kind of stunt rehearsals were, as soon as I had an afternoon free, I’d be in the stunt gym, basically. Or if I had a spare hour, we would be on the side of set, practicing because it’s basically like a really, really complicated dance routine. And if you don’t quite get it right, you don’t quite hit the right mark or throw the right punch, you might actually hurt yourself or somebody else. So, it’s really, really important.”
The work was challenging, but Emmanuel says she couldn’t have been more proud after seeing the results.
“I’m not going to lie. I kind of came upset to that first fight that we see in the movie, and I was like, ‘Oh, she’s a badass’ and it was amazing,” Emmanuel gushed. “So, that was really great. I’m so proud of the fights that we did.”
