Lana Condor, the star of the rom-com “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” film series and the voice behind the animated family movie “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” is not one to shy away from a challenge. Though she got her breakout role in romantic comedies, she’s also flexed her genre muscles, leaving her mark on action films such as “X-Men: Apocalypse” and “Alita: Battle Angel.” However, her latest, the action thriller “Pretty Lethal,” taps into specific dance training she first began doing when she was growing up in Washington state.
Specifically, her new film is built around ballet and centers on a dysfunctional troupe that finds itself caught in the middle of a bloody “John Wick”-esque battle on a trip that goes horribly awry. Condor never predicted her experience with ballet would help her with her acting career, but she said that it was nice to dance back to her roots.
“I grew up on Whidbey Island, and through the fall, through the winter, I would train, train, train because every spring was when my mom and I would get in the car, we’d go on the ferry, and we’d go to Pacific Northwest Ballet. That’s where they hosted all of the auditions for the summer conservatories,” Condor said. “I was a big dancer growing up and then I quit at 18 when I started acting. So I went back to dance through this film, and that was one of the quiet little blessings of this.”
Condor said her co-stars also had similar dance experience, all of which they put to use in what becomes a balletic brawl in which their characters must band together to fight their way free from a roadside inn run by a former ballet prodigy (Uma Thurman) and her henchmen. It’s another acting experience that Condor said, more than anything, is a privilege to get to do.
“Growing up, being an actor wasn’t even in my mind,” Condor said. “The fact that I’m an actor in the first place is something I’m so deeply grateful for. It’s such a difficult industry to be in sometimes and it’s not lost on me how much of a win it is just to even get employed. So the fact that I even, one, have a job, and, two, get to bring in my past experience in dance was definitely a dream come true and not something that I ever expected was even in the cards for me.”
Condor called “Pretty Lethal” a great bridge in her career in terms of where she is now and what she wants to do next. That next includes an upcoming film closer to home for Condor: a Pacific Northwest-shot and -set rom-com, “Whodunnit,” in which she plays a woman caught between a failed marriage and a rebound, resulting in a pregnancy that becomes a paternity mystery.
“I filmed ‘Whodunnit’ in Portland, which was really nice; very Pacific Northwest vibes. It was great,” Condor said. “There isn’t action in it, but the mystery thriller aspect of it is that she’s genuinely trying to find who the baby daddy is. … That film leans more into the rom-com genre, which I love and really hope that I get to continue to do. I love romance and I love comedy.”
Though the new films are quite different in genre, Condor said she was glad to also show off her comedic chops in both. (Condor is also the star of the upcoming “Coyote vs. Acme,” which was almost shelved and written off for tax purposes, though is now set for an Aug. 28 summer release.)
“I got lucky in ‘Pretty Lethal’ that the character I play, she’s so unlikable, and her lines as written on the page are just so cutting. In my opinion, they’re quite funny, so I had a lot of fun getting to play up the comedy,” Condor said. “I’m hoping that it plays as well in ‘Whodunnit’; we’ll see what the people think.”
Now having been in the middle of the industry for more than a decade, Condor said she has felt all of the many big changes with the rise of streaming and the ongoing shake-ups that have followed. She points to films like “Pretty Lethal” as being a positive development where there can be a production led entirely by women (she still said there were notes that the film should be changed to make it an all-male baseball team). As for what she is looking forward to next in her career, Condor said she’s glad to be able to be intentional with the projects she takes on.
“I’m at a point in my career where I am afforded a bit of a luxury of choice of not having to say yes to everything anymore. I’m just kind of getting out of that world where I felt like I had to say yes to everything because you never know when your next job is and you have to scrape your way up. I’m on the tail end of that where now I can be a little more picky with what I choose,” Condor said. “My whole focus is working with a great team. I’m so much more focused on who the filmmakers are behind the movie. I think that’s a luxury.”
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