Yahoo Lifestyle You Can Thank Adria Arjona for the Sexiness of ‘Hit Man’
Midway through my screening of Hit Man at the Sundance Film Festival, the audience burst into applause. To be clear, the movie was not done. But the two main characters, played by Adria Arjona and Glen Powell, had just pulled off something so unlikely that the audience couldn't help but react. It was a fun moment during a movie that, I cannot overstate this, is so, so fun. Arjona is a big part of why. As Madison, a woman who tries to hire a hit man to kill her husband but ends up dating the hit man instead, she gives the movie a sense of spontaneity and sexiness.
Arjona hopped on Zoom to talk about how she brought those elements to the character, why her first meeting with Powell about the role ended up being five hours, and what she thinks happened with Madison and Gary before that final scene.
[There are spoilers ahead for the ending of Hit Man. Proceed with caution!]
I read in an interview with director Richard Linklater that when you were first in discussion for the role, you got a coffee with Glen and it turned into drinks, then it became a five hour meeting. What do you remember about that day?
Well, it wasn't coffee. It was tequila, which is the reason why I don't remember much of what was said. Rick and I Zoomed and we had this great conversation. Rick knew that it was going to be me and called Glen and was like, oh, you have to meet her. But he didn't didn't tell him, this is our girl. And so we met, and Glen was supposed to call Rick after the hour and a half of our meeting to so they could make a decision whether it was going to be me or not.
I get to the meeting and we're both doing Dry January. Neither of us are drinking. Thirty minutes into it, we have this amazing conversation and Glen just sort of looks at me goes, can we please do this movie together? I want to do this with you. And then Glen was like, this feels celebratory, should we get some tequila? I was like, if you don't tell anybody, I won't tell anybody. We had tequila and we ended up hanging out for, like, five hours. The longest meeting I've ever been on. Rick was like, what happened to them? He was all concerned. He definitely didn't imagine that we were drunk on tequila together. And then we sent him a picture after the five hours and he's like, oh, my God, I'm so relieved. And that's how we said I do.
What did you like about Madison when you first read the script? She's such a great character, but she is tricky.
I liked her unpredictability and her fascination with wanting to reinvent herself. Madison comes from such an oppressed environment and when we first meet her the energy is down. I wanted her to blossom after that diner scene. She's playing the role of what she thinks a femme fatale is, and she's reinventing herself into this hot woman, but she doesn't really know exactly what she's doing. She's always trying to please Ron's fantasy, while Ron is trying to please her fantasy. So they're both playing a part in this relationship for different reasons.
There's that monologue at the end of the film about how you can become the person you want to be just by pretending to be the person that you want to be. We know how Gary's pretending, but we know less about how Madison is pretending.
Yeah, she's 100 percent putting on an act for herself and to rebuild that confidence. She finds a lot of safety in Ron and the idea of being with a hitman makes her feel so protected and safe. That's why she first gravitates toward him. When we first meet her she is so blinded. She's about to kill her husband. You have to fake it till you make it and that's kind of what Madison is doing.
Let's talk about that attraction between them. As far as she knows he literally kills people for a living. Why do you think that turns her on?
It's dangerous and safety at the same time. You see her ex husband and you can tell he's wealthy. You can tell he's more put together, he has this anger that is so entitled. So to be with somebody else that is driving a Honda Civic, you're like, yes, I love you. Ron's confident and has that element of safety. But also, he's so kind. She saw him play with puppies. She says, you opened every door for me tonight. He's Gary in the way he treats her and she likes that, but he's dangerous. That is really seductive.
We need to discuss the Notes App scene. That was the moment in my screening where people started clapping. How did you guys choreograph that? It really reminded me of a dance sequence.
It started off with the outline or the idea of that scene and we worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. We never gave up on that scene. Glen and Rick could tell you that their main point as the writers of the film was to put Madison and Ron in a corner and watch them get out of it. It was so well rehearsed. We ran it a million times, but never full out. We had the beats so locked and then by the time that we filmed it, it really was a dance that we knew every step to, but we had never heard the music, so all this magic started happening when we first heard Rick say action. It felt like we were putting on a play for the crew.
The scene where Ron decides to kill Jasper, what do you think that does for their relationship as a couple? It's an interesting evening of the playing field between them.
There are three really important scenes that build up to that moment. It's the scene where he comes in and I tell him that I killed my ex. We've been seeing this couple falling in love and this is the pivotal moment of breakage. Then there's that scene that comes right after, which is the phone Notes App scene and that's like their makeup sex. You see them make up as the scene finishes. You're like, oh, they're back together. They're committed. They're on the same team. He's not ratting her out. And then in that last scene, it's full commitment. I've been calling it the proposal scene. Like, we're in it. I'm in it for life. They both have something on each other.
At the end of the movie, we fast forward a few years and they're happily married with kids, but what do you think happened in the interim?
I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the conversations like, okay, but who really are you? And seeing Madison's reaction to the fact that he wears jean shorts and doesn't wear leather jackets. I think what Madison falls in love with is really Gary's qualities of Ron that keep coming out, like him being a gentleman. I think it's to her surprise to be like, oh, wow, you have a heart of gold.
What do you think this character allowed you to do on screen that maybe you hadn't been able to do before?
There's a level of comedy and banter I hadn't really played with a lot. I also haven't done many sensual, yet funny, thrillers. I either play really serious characters, or characters that are a little bit more put together or more dramatic. Madison is so free and spontaneous.
You mentioned the sensuality of the movie and it is so, so hot, which is such a lovely surprise.
That wasn't in the script fully. The more we created this dynamic, the more important to the plot their passion became. So I had a full mood board of images that I wanted in the movie. There was an image of this guy in Italy and his face is on this woman, and the woman's spilling a little bit of wine. That became our wine scene, of us naked pouring the wine. So we're seeing these images and sort of going, oh, I find that really beautiful. There was this one where a woman's taking off a stocking and then that became the scene where he takes off my sock slowly when I'm in the bed. So all these tiny little moments that you see really come from art.
We had photographs, we had sculptures that we were referencing and trying to recreate and make it into a 3D format and give them a heartbeat. It came from a beautiful visual place. And the majority of them I brought to the table, all these pictures. The flight attendant, we were chatting about like, what would Madison buy at Party City? When it came to the creation of Madison, Glen and Rick really involved me in the writing process. And I've never been a part of that, ever. And then Glen and I looked at each other and we were like, we have to perform this stuff. We kind of thought, oh yeah, Ron and Madison, Ron and Madison. I'm like, Yeah, but I'm Madison, and you're Ron, and we gotta do this! Which was a funny element. We were both like alright, well, we did this to ourselves.
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