This episode of Collider Ladies Night marks a very special occasion. Karen Gillan is officially the show’s first returning guest! Back in 2019, we went heavy on Gillan’s work behind the lens and in the Jumanji franchise, but round two gave us the opportunity to discuss Gillan’s early modeling days, her journey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe playing Nebula and, of course, her new Netflix movie, Gunpowder Milkshake.
Gillan leads the film as Sam. Back when she was just 12-years-old, Sam’s mother Scarlet (Lena Headey) was forced to abandon her, leaving Sam to be raised by The Firm, the crime syndicate her mother worked for. Now as an adult, Sam’s a successful and very skilled hit-woman, just like her mother once was. However, when a job forces Sam to choose between The Firm and an innocent young girl (Chloe Coleman), Sam opts to do what’s right, putting a massive target on her back in the process.
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Before we get to Gillan’s work playing an elite assassin, we’ve got to take a moment to revisit her early days in the industry. When asked for some audition highs and lows, Gillan pinpointed her audition for drama school in London, a program she thought she didn’t have any chance of getting into due to the age requirement. Another big win for Gillan in the audition department? Booking Doctor Who, of course. As for those lows, Gillan immediately recalled one particular horror movie audition that she walked into convinced it’d be an easy part to score:
“I’ve had a few lows, to be honest. I would say that the one really early on, it was for a horror film and I forget what it was, but it was for a part that was Scottish and I felt like, ‘I’ve got to get this. I mean, I’m Scottish!’ There’s loads of Scottish actors, but I for some reason thought because I’m Scottish I’m going to get it. And I didn’t get it because I went in and I didn’t know the lines as well as I should have, and I was looking at the script. That’s not completely unusual to look at the script, but I’ve never done it since this audition.”
And that right there is why we often revisit bumps in the road on Collider Ladies Night. While they may come with a good deal of disappointment at the time, lessons learned from those experiences could make all the difference moving forward. And now, Gillan’s got quite the system for learning her lines! She broke it all down for us:
“Basically I’ll record the other peoples’ lines in the scene and leave a gap for mine on Voice Notes on my iPhone. That’s pretty usual. So I’ll do that and then I have to go through the scene 10 to 20 times the night before, but I’ve done a lot of work prior to that point as well, but the night before, it’s probably like 20 times, making sure that I know it inside out. And then I go over every single line 20 times as fast as I can so that if I forget the lines, my muscles are going to remember the lines. And that also helps me because I’m usually acting in a different accent, and so I kind of need to get my mouth around it, otherwise I’ll be struggling slightly if I don’t know the sounds inside out … And then in the morning of the audition, or the day of the audition, I just don’t look at it at all or think about it. I just walk into the room, don’t look at it before, don’t look at it when I’m in the waiting room, nothing. Just walk in and trust yourself.”
Clearly that process is a winner for Gillan who’s amassed quite the list of titles over the years including Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, a substantial run in the MCU, the hugely successful Jumanji franchise and now headlining Gunpowder Milkshake with an epic ensemble around her. Given the stellar talent in this one, I had to ask Gillan who she was most nervous to work with:
“I feel like I was geeking out a little bit over Carla Gugino because - you’ll appreciate this - the Flanigan stuff. She was in Gerald’s Game, his movie, and I thought she was so amazing in that movie, and that would have been such a demanding role and so I was like, oh my god, I wanted to talk to her about it, but then I also wanted to play it cool.”
As for the stuntwork involved, even though Gillan’s got loads of experience in that department courtesy of the Jumanji movies and the MCU, it’s actually a very different fighting and filming style. Ultimately, Gunpowder Milkshake made Gillan feel like she was hitting a higher level of screen combat than ever. Here’s how she put it:
“I feel like with each movie I’ve gotten gradually better at fighting and I’ve now graduated to a full hardcore action movie, and it was a different ballgame. Because it wasn’t just one or two fight sequences. It was like the whole movie [laughs], and so it was a huge challenge. And I think the first section of the first fight sequence that I do in the movie, the director was like, ‘I want it to be just actors, no stunt doubles, all one take and a wide shot so you can see everything.’ So there’s like nowhere to hide, because this new style of filming action sequences is super handheld, cut really quickly so it’s hard to take in exactly what they’re doing. Apart from John Wick. They don’t do that. But everybody else does. [Laughs] And so they were like, ‘Oh wow, so we really have to deliver the energy and everything has to be precise and so that was a huge challenge for me to fight three guys with a suitcase.”
Looking for even more from Gillan? Be sure to check out her Collider Ladies Night video interview by clicking right here and if you’d like to listen to the full interview uncut, we’ve got that version for you as well in podcast form below. Gillan also spoke about how she capitalized on the popularity of Doctor Who, what it was like working with James Gunn, Joe and Anthony Russo and Taika Waititi on Nebula, and so much more!