-Our first guest tonight is a legendary Emmy- and Academy
award-winning actress you know from films
such as "Monster's Ball," "Die Another Day,"
and the X-Men franchise.
She both stars in and makes her directorial debut
with "Bruised," which is streaming now on Netflix.
Let's take a look.
-Immaculate sent you?
-Yeah.
-You used to be Jackie justice, right?
-Still am.
-Oh, yeah.
We'll see.
-Please welcome to the show Halle Berry, everybody.
Hello, Halle. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Hello!
-It's so lovely to see you again.
-Hi, Seth.
-I'm so happy to have you on the show.
I wish you were here, but you have a wonderful reason
for doing this remotely.
Tonight at the People's Choice Award, you are going to win
the Icon Award -- be presented with the Icon Award.
Congratulations. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Thank you, thank you.
Otherwise, of course, I would be right there.
-A little bittersweet for me.
I was runner-up.
[ Laughter ]
Last year, too, so it's really getting hard.
-I'll share it with you. -Thank you.
First of all, it just must be so nice to go to an award show
knowing in advance that you are going to be receiving an award.
You don't have to be a nominee
through the first half of the night.
-[ Laughs ] That is a good feeling.
But see, now you know you have to have a speech.
You know you have to have something to say.
When you don't know if you're gonna win, you can think,
"I don't really have to think of something to say
'cause I might not win," so, you know.
-That's true. You cannot do that move tonight where you get up
and you go, "Oh, my God, I didn't write anything!"
[ Laughter ]
Very exciting, as well -- I'm even maybe more jealous of this.
Not that you're winning the award,
but your presenter is Cardi B, who did a song on the album.
Collaborating with her on this film,
was that the first time you'd gotten to know her?
-Yes. I mean, I knew of her and I've been a fan of her
since she came on the scene.
I mean, who hasn't?
I mean, she's just been a powerhouse.
But it was our first time collaborating
and it's just been a dream to work with her
and put the whole album together and just support these ladies
and have their sound be a part of the film.
It's just been a dream-come-true experience.
-The character you play is what we've all come to
expect from you -- it's this wonderful acting performance.
You play this broken, very layered character,
but this is your first time behind the camera.
I heard that you don't actually like
watching yourself on camera.
Does that make directing yourself almost impossible?
[ Laughter ]
-Not impossible to direct but impossible to watch.
The edit was gnarly. [ Laughs ]
I mean, I really got tired of
looking at my face and looking at myself.
And I kept trying to cut myself out, and my editor was like,
"You know, you have to stay in this movie.
You're the protagonist." [ Laughter ]
I kept saying, "But you don't really need me here.
You don't need that shot on me here."
It's really very hard for me to watch myself.
-Were you surprised?
Having to revisit your performances each day,
were you surprised at which ones worked and which ones didn't
once you got a chance to see them?
Or was it, as an actor, did you think in your head,
"Oh, this'll be the one we use"?
-A little bit of both.
Because of the nature of the movie,
it was a lower-budget movie,
so it's not like I had a lot of choices to choose from,
if I'm telling you the truth.
I mean, some shots, we only got two takes,
so I had one or two to choose from.
So, you know, really didn't have that problem necessarily.
-As someone who doesn't like going back
and watching yourself, does that mean --
Do you ever revisit your old work?
Do you ever watch old Halle Berry movies?
-No. Sometimes when I'm watching,
I'm scrolling through television and one comes up.
I literally am like, "Aaah, God!"
[ Laughter ] "No, get it off!"
No, I really -- it's painful.
No, I don't. I see them -- We do a press screening
so we can talk about it at the junket,
I go to the premiere, and then that's it.
I never see them again, except this one.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah.
I heard you brought your 13-year-old daughter
to watch sort of early cuts of the film.
Was her eye helpful for you and how did she react?
-Yeah, I wanted to show her because this movie took almost
three years of my life and she wanted to see, like,
"What have you been doing all this time with your time, Mom?"
So I took her to see it, and unfortunately,
I was doing a watch-down and the color wasn't quite right
and she only got to see the two scenes that I was most nervous
about, which were the two love scenes in the movie
because those were two scenes that could tell us very clearly
where we were with our color grade.
And so that's all she got to see and at the end, she was like,
"So, that's what you've been doing for three years?"
[ Laughter ] "Great. Great, Mom."
-"I need a mom!" -I know.
-You're gallivanting around doing love scenes.
-And one that's not confused. Yeah.
-Another thing that has been reported on a great deal,
you know, you play this sort of an MMA-style fighter
who's returning to the ring.
You broke your ribs, real-life broke your ribs very early
in filming and toughed it out, which I imagine is probably
because you're an impossible director to work with.
You have no respect for your actors.
[ Laughter ]
-None, especially this one.
I was like, "Girl, tough that [bleep] out."
[ Laughter ]
"I paid you a lot of money to be here, come on, turn it out."
[ Laughter ] No.
I had by that time, after 2 1/2 years of training,
I felt like a fighter and I had the fighting spirit inside me,
and quitting is just never what fighters do.
I mean, they fight with dislocated shoulders,
broken bones, torn this, torn that,
and just quitting is not an option.
It's gonna take a referee to say stop, you know?
-And I guess for the method actor performance,
it was probably maybe even a little helpful to walk around
with a busted-up rib.
-[ Laughs ]
Mm, no, not so much. [ Laughter ]
Couldn't breathe. No, it wasn't so good.
-Yeah. Look, I twisted my ankle once
and we canceled the show for the whole week, so...
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, I get it.
-No judgment, Halle. [ Laughter ]
You obviously did a lot of fight training for other films,
"John Wick" being an example.
Did you have to do -- Like, did you have a nice starting point
going into this or was it building up back from zero?
-I had a good starting point with "John Wick."
I'd never worked harder until I started to train for "Bruised."
I had to do gun training and some basic martial arts,
but with "Bruised," I had to learn six different disciplines
that really weren't a part of my "John Wick" training.
So, physically, I was in a great shape to start
because I worked really hard on that.
But all the things that I had to learn to look like
a real MMA fighter and get all that technical stuff in my body,
I just had to put in the work and time to learn it.
-Well, it certainly shows.
Congratulations so much on the film
and congratulations tonight.
I do want to let you go so you can start
working on your speech. [ Laughter ]
-Thank you. I'm gonna share it with you.
-Alright, thank you so much.
I will be watching, and I would like you to --
Seth Adam Meyers.
If you can just use the whole name, that'd be wonderful.
-Seth Adam Meyers. Okay, got it.
-Halle Berry, everybody!
"Bruised" streaming now on Netflix.