Jennifer Garner in The Kingdom.
Jennifer Garner was as lively as can be at a recent press conference in Beverly Hills to promote her new film The Kingdom. When a reporter tried to sneak in about four minutes into the session, the actress spied him and offered a pleasant, “Hi,” before then leaning into the mike and announcing jokingly to the rest of the room in a deep, baritone voice, “Hello… this gentleman is late.”
In The Kingdom, Garner co-stars with Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper as a member of an elite FBI forensics team sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate the terrorist bombing of an American army compound—and her penultimate fight scene is like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Question: Your fight scene towards the end of the movie is something else. Did you realize going in that it was going to be such a down and dirty sequence?
Garner:
To be honest, I thought it wasn’t going to be much of anything. I kept saying to my stunt double Shauna Duggins, who I’ve worked with for six years and who is really my partner in crime and one of my best friends, “When are we going to have rehearsal for this fight scene?” I mean, we go in 110 percent prepared; I can still do the fights from Daredevil in my sleep. But I kept saying, “When are we going to rehearse? I’m getting nervous.” And she said, “They keep saying to me, we don’t need to rehearse.”
Then that day, I showed up and Shauna looked stunned. She had just learned the fight and she said, “This is unlike anything we’ve ever done. Get ready, we’re just going to try to beat the crap out of each other.” Which is so Pete Berg. Pete was a guest star on “Alias” the first season, and he and I had a fight. His idea of doing a fight was to improvise. I am a girl; I don’t really want to be punched. Pete started trying to actually hit me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised [by the nature of The Kingdom fight scene]. They yanked me out of that “Alias” fight so fast, I remember my camera guys were like, “We’re going to kill him. If he hits you again, we’re going to kill him.”
Question: What did it feel like in the moment to do that scene?
Garner:
It turned out to be an amazingly real scrabble. We loved shooting it, we had a blast. It was so down and dirty that we had scratch marks that we had to cover up on my face for the next few days, where the other actor just tried to grab me and pull my face off. He had a scab on his ear, because I bit his ear, and I actually bit his ear [again] and went, “Argggh.” It was nasty; it was great. We did have a rule in the fight, because I was breastfeeding. He did have to stay away from my boobs, and he did. That was the one sacred kind of thing. He could go for my face, he could pull my hair, but not the boobs.
Question: There were reports during the filming of The Kingdom that you collapsed on the Arizona set. What happened exactly?
Garner:
I never fainted or anything like that. I just was dizzy and didn’t feel right, and when we were on our way home, I said, “I feel not right enough that I don’t know if I can pick up my child. So let’s just go get me checked out.” It turned out, basically – after all is said and done – that it was too hot and I was in the heat too long every day to still be breastfeeding. And so I flipped into heatstroke. I had a couple of nights where I didn’t feel so good and they gave me something and then I felt better. Out of all the stuff I’ve ever done, I had never gone down before. I’ve worked so many more hours than this in the past, so I just couldn’t believe it when it happened.
Question: What kind of research did you do for the role?
Garner:
Instead of having rehearsals, where you’re kind of faking your way through scenes that you’re going to re-rehearse and rewrite anyway, our rehearsals were practical. We joined a class out of the blue with these FBI officers who were in evidence response training. They were from all over the country, in L.A. learning about bombs. And we just walked into their class – me, Jamie [Foxx] and Jason Bateman – and they were kind of like, “Huh?! Sydney Bristow is in our class?”
We spent another day with them learning about fingerprinting and all kinds of evidence response retrieval kind of things. And we did a paint gun thing, where the actors simulated the kind of mission we could actually really experience in Saudi Arabia. It terrified me; I was just so grateful that day that I don’t have to do that in my life, that it’s pretend. But I just couldn’t believe that we send these kids over there [to Iraq] to do this.
Q: Did you talk specifically to any female FBI agents?
Garner:
Yes, many. I would just be around them and looking, what was their hair like, what was their makeup like. My main thing was, “What do you have in your pockets?” One agent told me they always have candy for stressful situations, so I stole that. Those women are incredible; they are in the middle of the country and are armed and ready to go into a really hairy situation. They have kids and they go home most nights, but every now and then they have a bank robbery to deal with.
Question: It might surprise people, but there was a lot of improvisation done for The Kingdom. What was that experience like for you?
Garner:
When it comes to improvising, you’re working with the best when you’re talking about Jamie Foxx and Jason Bateman. Especially Jason; he never stays on book once. He’s incredibly deft about coming up with stuff right in the scene. But it’s also Pete, sitting at the monitor, listening to Christina Aguilera on the headphones, shouting, “Jen, say this!” And you go, “Really Pete?” And he says, “Yeah, just say it. It’s funny.” And later, you look at the movie and he was right.
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