Rina Sawayama “nailed” role in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ says director
John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski has said that Rina Sawayama “nailed” her performance as Akira. The role marks Sawayama’s big-screen acting debut.
In a recent interview with NME, Stahelski explained that he contacted Rina after seeing one of her music videos. “I knew very little about her beforehand,” he said. “I was exposed to her as we were casting the role of Akira. We’d seen her music videos and just something about her look and something about her performances in her music videos was… she seemed right out of an anime, and Japanese anime is a big influence for this.”
The director got on a Zoom call with the singer “24 hours after I’d seen her video” and offered her the role. “She flew over [to Berlin], met Keanu [Reeves], met myself, and her enthusiasm and professionalism… She was just great and she asked a lot of questions. We put her with the stunt team. Again, her enthusiasm just nailed it. We knew we had the right person.”
When asked if Sawayama had been forwarned about the thought stunt training required for her role, Keanu Reeves said: “A little. She’s a dancer and a performer, so her control and her understanding of space and her body and what it does mean to train… but yeah, because I think she hadn’t really lifted weights. Chad set her up with a trainer, so doing exercises specifically for being able to do somersaults, rolls, kicking, punching and reactions. It takes time and prep, and she did it.”
You can read our five-star review of John Wick: Chapter 4 here.
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