The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
Hit Man
star Adria Arjona.
During her chat with Perri Nemiroff, Arjona revisits early projects like
True Detective
,
Emerald City
, and
Pacific Rim Uprising
.
Arjona also explains why
Hit Man
was a one-of-a-kind collaborative experience that she’s especially proud of.

Adria Arjona has been showing off her impeccable craft and great range for years now, but Hit Man might be one of her most impressive performances of the bunch. She isn’t playing a femme fatale in the film, rather, she’s playing a woman playing a femme fatale to better suit what she thinks her new beau wants to see in a potential partner — which is exactly what he’s doing to her. It’s a mighty complicated concept that demands the most refined screenplay and deft performances.

Glen Powell headlines Richard Linklater’s Hit Man as the title character, in a sense. Powell’s Gary isn’t a hit man, but rather, a “hit man.” He’s a college professor who moonlights for the New Orleans Police Department by posing as a hit man in attempt to catch people trying to off an enemy. It turns out, Gary is quite good at the gig, effortlessly adapting his image to the type of hit man he thinks his target would best respond to. However, one target throws him for a loop — Arjona’s Madison. Madison is struggling with an abusive husband and sees no way out, so tries to hire Gary, posing as Ron, to kill him. Trouble is, Gary winds up falling for Madison, and she winds up falling for him, too — but as Ron.

Hit Man is an utterly delightful and hugely entertaining neo-noir, one that required maximum precision to pull off. Powell isn’t the only one playing a person putting on a persona in the film. So is Arjona. Pulling off such a performance in a way that holds tight to the grounded challenges that put their characters in these positions is no easy task, but Arjona excels tackling the challenge. While Madison was likely a strong character on the page, there’s no doubt that Arjona’s work is what makes her soar.

How’d Arjona acquire the skill set to genre jump, entertain and craft a deeply human character all at once? That’s exactly what we discussed during our Collider Ladies Night interview in celebration of the release of Hit Man, which is now available to stream on Netflix.

Thanks to her father, Arjona grew up surrounded by both movies and music. However, when she stopped spending time on a tour bus with her dad, she struggled to find a creative outlet. His encouragement to keep pursuing one, however, pointed her in the right direction.

“My dad and my mom love watching movies, so I would always just watch characters and then go in front of the mirror and kind of mimic it. And then, as I was growing up, I grew up on a tour bus with my dad, I moved to Miami and I no longer had any sort of creative outlet. I wasn’t surrounded by music. I was in Miami which, back then, didn’t have that much. I didn’t have a creative outlet, and my dad was like, ‘Well, I think you should take photography classes or get back into dance classes or go into acting classes,’ to sort of break out of my shell when I was going to a new school. So
I started an acting class and it triggered me
immediately

. It was like a little bug that was put in my brain and I couldn’t take it out, and I just became obsessed.”

Adria Arjona Got Kicked Out of Acting School – And It Was Exactly What She Needed

While Arjona immediately took to these acting classes in Miami, there often comes a time when one must leave something good behind in order to move forward. She didn’t recognize that herself, but fortunately, an acting teacher did, and it inspired him to kick her out of his classes.

“The reason that I got to [Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute] was because I was going to an acting school in Miami and the owner of the school kicked me out.
He kicked me out, and it was the biggest gift I think I’ve ever gotten.
He looked at me one day, I was at the door, and he’s like, ‘If I don’t kick you out, you’re gonna stay in Miami, and I don’t see where you can grow as an actress in Miami. You are destined for so much more.’ So, I went to Lee Strasberg. ‘You have to go to Lee Strasberg and learn from the big leagues.’ He just believed in me so blindly. He saw something that no one else had seen. And yeah, he closed the door and I never walked into that studio again. That’s Mr. Ralph Kinnard. I owe him a lot, and I’m really grateful for him.”

By nudging her out the door, Mr. Kinnard put Arjona on a path to one of the greatest acting programs out there, Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City. Why did Arjona choose that program in particular? She credits a curiosity about method acting.

“
I liked the idea of method acting.
To everyone, really, method acting is something that everyone’s really curious about, and it’s fascinating to hear all these stories of how people get in character. That’s all we sort of talk about, ‘Method acting, method acting. What is it?’ So it was something that really intrigued me.”

The Marvel Actor Who Became Arjona’s Mentor
Image via NBC

While Arjona had the opportunity to learn a good deal from the program, she did miss out on one particular thing she was really eager to experience — studying with Emmy nominee and all-around acting force, Vincent D’Onofrio.

“
Vincent D’Onofrio taught at my school
, at Lee Strasberg, and I became really good friends with his daughter, Leila George, who, by the way, is an incredible, incredible actress. I just got goosebumps talking about her. She’s phenomenal. I always wanted to be in his class, but I couldn’t because I was doing another job. It was always something that wouldn’t let us work together, or for me to be in his class. You had to go through an audition process to be in his class and he chose me, and that was super exciting, and then I couldn’t do it. And that happened twice, so my heart was shattered.”

Little did Arjona know at the time, soon she’d get the opportunity to not only learn from D’Onofrio, but act alongside him. In 2017, Arjona starred as Dorothy Gale in the highly anticipated NBC series, Emerald City, directed by the wildly ambitious visionary, Tarsem Singh. D’Onofrio played the show’s Wizard. “To do Emerald City and for him to play The Wizard of Oz and to be acting alongside him like a mentor, really, I mean, I learned so much from him.” She added, “He’s one of my favorite actors. I respect him so much.”

Lessons Learned from Cailee Spaeny

One of the next great influences Arjona encountered? Priscilla and Alien: Romulus star, Cailee Spaney. At this point, Spaney has a mighty impressive filmography — one that should include a little more awards season love for her work in Priscilla, in my opinion — but back when Arjona met her for the first time, Spaeny was making her very first film, and it was a big one. It was Pacific Rim Uprising.

Arjona had been part of some significant projects at that point, but a $150 million+ studio blockbuster like Pacific Rim was a completely different story. “I had never been on such a big set. The amount of green screens — I mean, the green screens were, like, a New York City building. At least that’s how they looked to me. It was really intimidating. I had no idea where to look.” Arjona laughed and added, “I went from method acting to a green screen. I was destined for the theater, not for the green screen, so it was definitely a challenge for me.”

How’d she tackle that challenge? By taking a cue from Spaeny:

“I remember Cailee Spaeny, who’s a good friend of mine and she’s incredible,
she had this youthful, kind of go-with-the-flow energy
because she also was, in a way, naive like me. It was her first movie, so I kind of leaned into that where, instead of going, ‘I’ve been on a set before. I know how this is done,’ I kind of leaned into just leaning back and being like, ‘I know nothing, so
I’m just gonna go with the flow and ask questions and not be ashamed of not knowing the answer to everything
.’ I think that really helped because I was like, ‘I don’t know where to look. I’ve never done this before.’ I leaned into not trying to sort of be cool or impress the producers. I was like, at the end of the day, people are going to see
me
in the movie, they’re not gonna see the producers or anybody else, so I needed to make sure that I didn’t seem like I was crazy.”

Arjona Has No Interest in Playing the Traditional Femme Fatale
Image via Netflix

Related ‘Hit Man’ Review: Richard Linklater’s Netflix Noir Is a Hilarious, Sexy Gem Glen Powell is having a ball in one of the most thoroughly entertaining films of Linklater’s career.

Arjona’s willingness to ask questions, learn and evolve her craft has served her well over the years. After Pacific Rim Uprising, she tackled ambitious action films like Triple Frontier and 6 Underground, joined one of the most beloved franchises of all-time, Star Wars via Andor, and now beautifully brings the complexity of Madison’s situation to screen in Hit Man.

In our Hit Man production notes, Arjona is quoted as saying she wasn’t interested in playing a femme fatale, noting, “That would have been really exciting to me at the beginning of my career.” Why was that the case, and what changed over the years? Here’s how she explained it:

“I think you’re young and the idea of a femme fatale is really exciting, and I think
the older I get, the more understanding I have of who I am as a woman
. I mean, I still have nothing figured out. Do any of us, really? But you kind of get a sense of who you are and a little bit of who you’re becoming, so I think at the beginning, it would have been really exciting to be this sort of femme fatale, but in this movie, it’s the
idea
of a femme fatale that Madison is playing or pretending to be.”

Much of the Hit Man promotional campaign has focused on Powell’s character and his different personas, but when you see the film in full, it’s also abundantly clear that Arjona’s Madison is putting on a similar kind of show.

“She’s putting on this character for Ron and thinking that that’s maybe who he’ll want. She comes from a relationship which is kind of traumatizing and dark, and you can tell that [her husband] has some psychological control over her, so much that she sees no other option than to kill him. Then Ron gives her a different perspective and goes, ‘Hey, by the way, you have another option.’ I think when you’re so stuck in your corner, you can’t see anything else, and that’s who Ron is for Madison. She’s like, ‘Wow, I really like this guy. Who do I have to become?’ Because she doesn’t know who she is anymore, she was
so
lost in that relationship, she’s like, ‘Who do I have to become for this man to like me?’”

Image via Netflix

How exactly does one go about establishing consistency with a character when that character is trying to be something they’re not? Arjona explained:

“I needed to find an anchor, and really what I found was that
there was a woman that was seeking some sort of validation
. The way she was finding it might not be the best way, but that’s what she was doing. And I find myself doing that all the time because we’re human. We’re like, ‘What’s north and what’s south?’ But yeah, she’s in a tricky place, and I think
she’s desperate for someone to say, ‘You’re good enough,’
or, ‘You’re good,’ and the way that Ron looks at her makes her feel all these things.”

Arjona Got a “Seat at the Table” in a Key Way While Making ‘Hit Man’
Image via Netflix

In true Ladies Night fashion, my conversation with Arjona concluded by asking her to pinpoint something she accomplished making Hit Man that she’s especially proud of, and her answer is a big part of the reason her character, and in turn, the film overall feels especially refined and strong.

“If there’s something that I’m proud of for this, it was, I think, in the writers’ room, knowing that I was with my favorite filmmaker and being courageous enough to speak my mind and pitch my ideas. It also is very much credit to them for rolling out a place for me to be able to do this, but to have the courage, I think, is something that I’m really proud of because I feel like, if not, I would have watched the movie and regretted some of the choices.”

While I’m willing to bet that Hit Man began its journey with a solid script, there’s no doubt that Arjona, Powell and Linklater’s dedication to honing it via an extensive rehearsal heavily contributed to how high it soars on screen. Arjona continued by speaking about the value of that stage of the process:

“I also feel proud that, in rehearsal, Glen and I were able to sort of put aside the fact that we were gonna perform the scenes that we were collaborating on, or writing — I mean, he did the writing, but it was more discussion, but we were creating it together. The fact that we were able to put that aside and add all these really central moments, that Glen would bring a painting and I would bring a photograph or a sculpture, and we would change these ideas and find little images of what we found central and sexy, and we kind of put them into a 3D form and put them in the script. But
if I had just been an actress on this, I would have been scared
to put myself in that position to make these scenes, but because, for the first time, I was given a seat at the table as a writer — or [they] picked my brain as a writer, not that I wrote it — I was able to put myself to the side, and I’m so happy I did because I had so much fun making them. I think they’re beautiful, and they served the story, and it gave some confidence to Madison.”

Looking for even more from Arjona on her journey to Hit Man, including the very bold move she made to score a role in True Detective and her experience working on Andor Season 2? You can watch the full conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the interview in podcast form below:

Hit Man Inspired by an unbelievable true story, a strait-laced professor discovers his hidden talent as a fake hit man. He meets his match in a client who steals his heart and ignites a powder keg of deception, delight, and mixed-up identities.Release Date June 7, 2024 Director Richard Linklater Runtime 113 minutes Main Genre Romantic Comedy Distributor(s) Netflix Expand

Hit Man is now available to stream on Netflix.

Watch Here