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Jennifer Garner on The Kingdom
By Fred Topel | Image property of Universal Pictures.
The Kingdom
We've seen Jennifer Garner fight a lot. Usually her sequences are gracefully choreographed numbers. In her new film, The Kingdom, she gets down and dirty. As an American FBI agent in Saudi Arabia, when she has to defend herself, it's no holds barred. This came from director Peter Berg, who worked with Garner before.
Garner Armed for The Kingdom
"Pete Berg was a guest star on Alias the first season," she recalled. "He and I had a fight and his idea of doing a fight was to improvise. I’m a girl. I don’t really want to be punched and he thought, ‘Hey, once we get in it, let’s just see what happens.’ He started trying to actually hit me so I shouldn’t have been surprised. They yanked me out of that fight scene so fast. I remember my camera guys were just like, ‘We’re gonna kill him. If he hits you again, we’ll kill him.’ They put Shauna [Duggins] in who takes all my bruises and she was in there biting Pete Berg. So, I should not have been surprised when she said to me, ‘This is just a fight where you try to kill him and he’ll try to kill you.' So, it turned out to be an amazingly real scrabble. We loved shooting it. We had a blast."
If the fight scene was a challenge for a veteran like Garner, imagine the rest of the gig, playing the only female FBI agent in a team investigating a bombing in Saudi Arabia. "Instead of having rehearsals where you're kind of faking your way through scenes that you're going to re-rehearse and re-write anyway, our rehearsals were practical. We just joined a class out of the blue with this group of FBI officers who were in evidence response training from all over the country. They were in LA learning about bombs and we just walked into their class, me and Jamie [Foxx] and Jason Bateman. They were all kind of like, 'Huh? Sydney Bristow is in our bomb class?' And it was great. We learned a ton."
She's fired many guns on Alias, but The Kingdom gave her even more gun training. "We did a day with this Harry Humphries, who I'm sure you guys have heard about, who teaches actors how to use guns properly. So we did a day with that and we ended up doing a paint gun thing where the actors simulated the kind of mission that we would actually be on in the movie. It terrified me. I was so grateful. I just remember, that day, being so grateful that I don't have to do that in my life, and that it's pretend. I just couldn't believe that we send these kids over there to do that, but anyway..."
There were other female agents during Garner's training, and she borrowed some characteristics from them. "I would just be around them, looking at them. What was their hair like? What was their make-up like? My main thing was, 'What's in your pockets?' [One said,] 'Well, I always have these gloves, I always have one set. I always have candy for a stressful situation.' So I stole that. 'I always have something to write with.' My pockets in the movie, whether I used that stuff or not in the scene, I was always going to prop guy, 'Okay, I think I need some more gloves, and I think I need some more lollipops.' And they were just like, 'Okay, Jennifer's pockets, let's fill 'em up.'"
The Kingdom opens to theatres on September 28th.
For the trailers, stills, poster and more movie info, go to The Kingdom Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Universal Pictures.
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