- We're here with the director and cast of "Bruised,"
I wanna welcome you all.
We have Shamier Anderson who plays Immaculate in the film,
Aiden Canto plays Desi, Sheila Atim
who plays Bobby Buddhakan
and the director and star of the film
who plays Jackie, Halle Berry.
Welcome to all of you, thanks so much for being here.
- Cool, thank you for having us.
- Halley I wanna start with you as an actor,
you have shown such range on screen,
you played super heroes, super villains
and people who are just struggling to survive like Jackie.
And for the first time that you were gonna direct,
what was it about Jackie and her story that drew you to her?
- I think I saw so much of who I am and her story,
being a woman of color, a black woman in this industry.
I think I understand what it has meant to fight
over the years to find a place for myself
and oftentimes make a way out of no way
and right away that's what connected me to this character.
I'm always connected to the underdog,
I felt like the underdog, so many moments,
not only in my personal life, but in my professional life,
I understand the struggle and the fortitude and the tenacity
that it takes to survive and to rise above the odds
and that was the first thing that connected me.
Whenever I think of a character,
I have to feel like they can sit in my body
and she sat squarely in my body
the first time in the script.
- It's also very physical role that you have to play.
This is a mixed martial artist, a fighter
and I'm just curious for that part of the role
for the physicality of it,
for the actual training.
What did you have to go through
or did you happen to have some MMA background
that we don't know about?
- I didn't have any MMA background
other than a supreme love of the sport
and an interest in learning everything I could about it.
I went on a two and a half year journey of training
and learning many of the different disciplines
from Jui-jitsu to TaeKwonDo, to Judo,
to wrestling, to boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai.
I studied many of those different disciplines
and sort of came up with a fighting style
for this character,
but it was about a two and a half year a proposition.
- It feels real,
I mean I don't follow MMA in a big way,
but those fight scenes,
especially the big fight at the climax
are really spectacular.
There are so many boxing movies,
not that much in terms of MMA,
did you have to come up with a visual style as the director
in terms of how you're gonna shoot the fights?
- I did and I wanted to somehow,
keep this film squarely in the genre
because this is a genre that people
over the years traditionally have loved so much.
So I wanted to have it feel similar in a way,
but I also challenged myself and everyone around me to think
of new ways to shoot something,
new ways to shoot fighting.
So I was determined never to show
anybody punching a boxing bag
or not to show sort of the new facets to training
and especially martial arts training.
It's very different than English boxing
and I wanted to try to bring as many of those
different elements to these training sequences
as I possibly could.
And I also wanted the real community the UFC,
the MMA community, Bellator and Victor.
I wanted all the fighters in those leagues
to hopefully see this movie
and really see themselves in it
and have them find that it was an accurate depiction
of their world.
- Wow, in addition to the fighting
'cause the movie is not just about fighting,
it's also a very powerful, emotional story as well
and you cast these remarkable actors alongside you.
And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit
now that we have them here and you can embarrass them.
- I know.
- Can you tell us a little bit about why you cast each one?
- Oh my God,
the first thing I wanna say when I got advice
from some of the directors that I admire and love so much,
the first thing they said to me was script, script, script,
and then cast it, right.
- Mhm.
- Your biggest job as a director will be to find the actors
that you really need.
And when I tell you that they were my greatest gift,
because these, every actor in this movie hands down
are masters of their craft and they brought it
for this movie.
So where should we start? Okay, Sheila,
Sheila who plays Buddhakan,
she was the first character that I actually cast.
She was the first one that I saw for the role
and I subsequently saw many others after her,
but the first time I saw her,
I said to my casting director, Amy Kaufman,
she's the one, she's the one,
and there was something about her audition
that just stood her above everyone else.
Her sincerity, her acting ability,
her command of the character
and I hadn't even had a conversation with her
about the character.
It was her own interpretation of the material
and she just blew me away, blew me away.
And I say, she was my first one I cast,
she was the last one to actually get the job
because we had all this red plate to go through,
getting her from the UK.
- Right.
- And getting permitted.
And so there was a time when I thought it wouldn't happen
and I thought I was gonna have to kill myself
because I knew I had to have her,
that character was so important.
And when I researched Sheila, she's a beautiful singer,
a stage actress that English track,
they just have a different technique.
I think that we're not always used to seeing
over here in the United States.
And she brings all of that,
all of that talent with her.
So she blew me away.
And then we have Adan, my Desi,
who I spent a long time looking for also,
because that was a very key role.
And I needed to find someone that had, a row sex appeal,
because he does play my love interest and he had to,
you had to believe that he was a former fighter.
- Mnh
- And you also had to believe that he was dangerous
at the same time,
that there had to be something dangerous about him,
but also very likable at the same time.
So he had to be very complicated and complex.
And I found that very hard to find until I came across Adan
who also audition and just blew me out of the water
because he had all of the pillars.
- Mnh.
- And I thought he really brought Desi to life
in a beautiful way.
And then we get to Shamier here
who has to carry the name Immaculate.
- Immaculate.
(laughing)
- So already you know you have to,
you have to have someone like Shamier,
you have to have someone who has
a bit of a bigger than life persona.
When they walk in the room,
you have to feel their presence before you even see them,
you have to know they're standing behind you somehow.
And Shamier has that,
not only does he have acting chops
and he's a talented actor,
but he also has that quality that,
you can't teach, you have to sort of be born with that.
And he has that commanding presence
without even opening his mouth,
he says so much,
when I got to meet Shamier right away I thought, wow.
Yes, yes. He's exactly.
- I wanna hear a little bit
from each one of your actors as well.
Shamier let's start with you, TIFF rising star,
Toronto star bronze on a lot of people here know you,
this movie I think is gonna take you even to another level
'cause your performance is very strong.
What I'm interested in is your voice,
the cadence of your voice that you give to Immaculate
is it's almost like it's a little bit
kind of behind the beat,
it has as a slyness almost like a jazz musician
or blues musician.
Can you talk about how you found the voice for Immaculate?
- The great question, Cameron, and it's so funny
you asked that because that was the first part
of the process for me as an artist and as an actor,
it's about finding the walk,
it's about finding the talk
about finding the mindset
and I'm Canadian and I'm from Toronto Scarborough
and Immaculate from the New York area,
Brooklyn and The Bronx spent some time in Jersey
and I spent some time with a lot of individuals
on my off time just kind of being in the streets,
hearing some of the slangs, the words, the cadence,
but also spending a lot of guys from the nineties.
I think he was very inspired by the nineties.
A lot of rap stars.
I won't give specific names because then
you'll start extrapolating my performance
and saying, oh, that rapper, he did that, he did this.
But I really wanted to immerse myself into his space
and I felt like with the name like Immaculate,
he was really in his own world
and he kind of created the rhythm
and he created the flow he didn't go with it.
And so that was a huge part of my development process
with the character and just really working
with the incredible team that Halley brought
to the set every day.
And just listening to Halley,
listening to my costars and just really trying
to be a fly on the wall
and really understanding the world
that incredible writer that Michelle built in
and then Halley put together
and just really being in that space
and doing my best to stay in that voice nonstop.
So thank you for noticing,
it's something I really worked hard on.
- Adan you got a tough role to play
because you were Halley's love interests
in first part of the film,
but you're also a guy who treats her character pretty badly.
And I know that an actor has to find a reason why,
and I wondered as you were working through
how you're gonna portray this character,
what was his reason why?
- It's a really good question.
It took me about a couple of weeks to really find
his heartbeat, I think.
And I guess bottom line,
I really wanted to find his relationship to himself,
to Halley's character and ultimately then to the little boy,
which brings so much to the table for him
and so much so in fact that it reminded him
in my mind, the way I sort of settled into it all was
in fact seeing the little boy right there,
it just automatically brought me as an actor
and already in Desi's shoes,
into the realm of what happens in that pivotal moment
to growing up as a boy fatherless,
in those kinds of circumstances.
And it's almost like he,
it reminded him of possibly himself
and I see Desi as somebody who at some point cared
and he still cares too much
and I'd be certainly played him that way.
Somebody who at some point committed everything in his life
to something.
And something happened along the way where he lost himself.
- Okay.
- And then that what happens to the,
that frustration, you start blaming the world,
you start trying to find other things
to put the weight on,
but just taken off yourself.
And that being said it was,
with Jackie it's love and hate
she's doing the thing that Desi was meant
to do all of his life and now he can't
because he believes in her.
- Yeah.
- You know, immensely and deep inside,
there's a massive love and admiration for it
but at the same time, he struggles with the,
maybe a little jealousy about it.
I think I sensed that and I play that out,
used those buttons.
- Yeah, Sheila I wanna ask you about your character
from the context of some of these same emotions,
the love, the passion, the conflict
that your character Bobby feels to the film.
There's also this incredible,
so like a hard shell and a vulnerability
and I know it's sometimes hard to play both.
You have a remarkable resume.
People might not know all of the work you've done
on stage in the UK, the LA VA award, your music,
your play writing, all of it the things you've done,
you're bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience
to playing Bobby.
Can you talk a little bit about that tension
within that care?
- Yeah the first thing was really interesting for me
that Halley was keen on me, picked on my own accent.
I actually auditioned in my own accent because
I don't even know why
I just kind of ended up doing my self, taking my own accent
and how you really want to keep that,
which I was really excited about.
Because it gave me this sense of otherness,
you don't completely know how she got to being in New Jersey
with all these taxis.
It never really gets explained but you get the sense that
she's indeed saving lives.
She's also got this spiritual side to her
that is clearly a part of this kind of ongoing journey
of growth that she's trying to go through,
and trying to stay off the alcohol and so forth.
So for me,
it was about trying to keep the mystery of this person,
but also making sure it wasn't just vague
and it wasn't just the absence of detail and context.
And I think she's just,
she's lived it all life, she's done a lot of stuff,
she's been through a lot.
And with people who have those experiences,
it is a constant struggle every day.
Particularly if you are dealing
with something like addiction, she is
or you are dealing with pain and hurt from the past.
In my opinion, she moved around a lot.
So it wasn't just the case that she came from East London
and ended up in New Jersey and that was it.
I think she's getting all over the world.
And so she's picked up all of those different experiences
and they can be different chapters in her life.
And so that's how I tried really hard to see them fuse
the character that we see in the film.
- It does feel like there's a lot of layers to her.
- Yeah.
- A lot of that story, you can tell.
- She's trying to negotiate all of them
and then she picks Jackie and Jackie is a person who
I'm nannying her son and these people
who sparked something in her,
something that's been buried for a long time.
I think sometimes when you are trying to negotiate
lots of difficult things within your life,
it becomes easier to be kind of single minded in a sense
push some things out, just through the experience,
in being able to deal with a few things.
And I think Jackie kind of sparks
the resurgence of feelings that we haven't fought
for a long time.
So dealing with that is a new challenge for her.
- Thank you.
I wanna go to you for the last question, Halley.
I think most of us remember your Oscar speech
when you won best actress for "Monsters Ball,"
and you connected your achievement that night
on the Oscar stage to the black women
who had gone before you.
And I wonder in making your debut as a filmmaker
at a time when there's this incredible surge in creativity
from Gladstone makers on TV and in film,
this is so much great work coming up right now.
Is there a legacy that you're connecting yourself to,
that you feel connected to as a director now as well?
- Well, I think it's because of all of that energy
that I, myself, I think decided to tackle directing,
because I now knew that I could,
because there've been others before me now
who've been daring to do just that.
And that gave me the confidence that, Oh,
I have a story to tell.
I have things that are important to me
that I also wanna say, and that I can actually do that.
So if there's a legacy left,
I hope it continues to be that we can dare
to do whatever we believe we can do.
And I think I've tried to live with that belief
in the back of my mind, since I started,
I've dared to dream that I can do things
just because no one had done it before me
didn't mean that I couldn't do it.
And I will continue to push the boundary
and continue to do things that inspire me to challenge me,
even if I haven't done it before.
Thank you, Halley makes some more movies,
bring them to our room, bring them over the world,
but we wanna see them here too, okay.
- Thank you .
- All right.
- so much for having us.
- Shamier Anderson, Adan Canto, Sheila Atim
and director and star of "Bruised," Halley Berry,
thank you so much.
- Thank you guys.