‘John Wick’ director gushed over Rina Sawayama debut

Lede: John Wick filmmaker Chad opened up about Rina Sawayama has entry debut as Akira in John Wick: Chapter 4.

Speaking to NME, the 54-year-old said that he got in touch with Sawayama after watching her music videos.

“I knew very little about her beforehand,” the director said. “I was exposed to her as we were casting the role of Akira.”

The filmmaker continued, “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 stuntman added that he imvited singer to a Zoom call, “24 hours after I’d seen her video” and invited her to fly over to Berlin.

“She flew over, 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.”

Keanu Reeves also gushed over the 32-year-old stunt executions, “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.”