Vivica A. Fox had to remind Sterling K. Brown she’s ‘tough as nails from “Kill Bill”’ during brutal “Is God Is” scene (exclusive)

Key points

• Vivica A. Fox plays Ruby the God in Aleshea Harris’s directorial debut, Is God Is.

• The Independence Day star ranks Harris alongside Quentin Tarantino and F. Gary Gray as the most talented directors she’s worked with.

• In one violent scene, Fox had to remind costar Sterling K. Brown that she could handle rough stunts from working on Kill Bill.

First-time filmmaker Aleshea Harris found God in Vivica A. Fox.

The Kill Bill star delivers a heavenly performance — and makes an early case for character introduction of the year — in the playwright’s directorial debut, Is God Is, starring as the title character, the Lord Almighty herself.

At least, that’s how she seems in the eyes of her twin daughters, Racine, a.k.a. the Rough One (Kara Young), and Anaia, a.k.a. the Quiet One (Mallori Johnson). She created them, after all.

But the twins haven’t seen their mother, Ruby, whom they call God, since their father (Sterling K. Brown) set her on fire and left her (and them) for dead. In fact, they grew up believing she had died in the blaze, which left them with disfiguring scars, until they receive a letter summoning them to her door.

The scene above, debuting exclusively with Entertainment Weekly, offers a glimpse at what they find inside. Ruby, now on her literal deathbed, is covered in scars even more severe than her daughter’s. Wearing a decorative balaclava to cover her face, she takes a drag from a joint — prepared by two aides otherwise occupied with braiding her hair — and explains that she had intentionally stayed out of the twins’ lives, believing they were better off with foster families, away from her and their father, who, she reveals, is also still alive. For now.

She’s gathered the girls here to make one final wish: “Make your father dead. Real dead.”

“It was beautiful the way that I was introduced,” Fox tells EW of the scene. “With the smoke and the girls coming through and then the gentleness, and then the danger…I love how sweet she was, then she went so dark. She’s the catalyst for sending the girls out on the revenge mission.”

Barely recognizable, Fox underwent hours of prosthetics for the scene, her only appearance in the film outside of flashbacks. “That was totally Aleshea’s vision,” she says of the writer-director, who adapted her own play for her feature debut. “She was very honest with me that I would be severely burned, that I would have to go through hours of prosthetics, that I would have the wig and the braids and the nails.”

While she had some experience with prosthetics from a previous role, Fox says, “This was different, because she was so severely burned… It was jarring, to be very honest with you.”

Still, Harris knew she needed the Independence Day star for this role. “You are my first and only choice to play God,” Fox says the director told her, recalling their first Zoom meeting. “I am a huge fan of Kill Bill, and you’re it.”

After working together on Is God Is, an epic revenge saga that shares some visual and thematic similarities with the Kill Bill movies, Fox now ranks Harris alongside Quentin Tarantino and F. Gary Gray as her favorite directors, and the movie alongside her favorites she’s starred in (Independence Day, Set It Off, Two Can Play That Game, Kill Bill, and Soul Food also make the list).

But it was her experience playing Vernita Green, a.k.a. Copperhead, that kept coming to mind while filming the flashbacks alongside Brown as the Monster. At one point in those horrifying scenes, which depict the fateful night of the fire, the Monster chokes his wife unconscious before dragging her into a bathtub, dousing her in alcohol, and lighting her on fire. But Brown, Fox says, needed a little encouragement to make it look realistic.

“Sterling is such a jewel. He really is. Sterling K. Brown is so talented, but I had to make him choke me,” she explains with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Come on, I did Kill Bill, I’m tough. I can handle it, okay? Choke me out! We want them to believe that she’s being choked out.’

“He’s such a kind gentleman, very talented,” she continues. “He didn’t want to pour the whiskey on my face. I was like, ‘Dude, come on. We gotta show how she gets so burnt up, douse me with that!’ He’s like, ‘Well, what about your makeup?’ I was like, ‘Go for it. They can touch me up. It’s all good.’ So he was very gentle with me and very kind. I think that was just out of respect and him forgetting that I was tough as nails from Kill Bill.”

Sometimes, though, Fox admits, she also needed a little reminder of her own pedigree. “Kara was my anchor, to be honest with you,” she says of the two-time Tony Award winner. “Like, she knew my lines. And I remember her encouraging me one time when I got a little frustrated. She’s like, ‘You’re Vivica Fox. Come on. You’re Vivica Fox. Go on and give them that.’ And then when I finished, she said, ‘Yes, Vivica Fox right there.'”

Praising both Young and Johnson in the scene, she adds, “They was delivering them Denzel tears. I was like, ‘Don’t run out of gas,’ thinking I’m the wiser one. ‘Here, drink some water.’ I was teaching them my tricks, and they delivered them tears on every take. I was so proud of them.”

That sense of pride extended to the whole production, a rare genre film led predominantly by Black women. “Hats off to Sinners,” Fox says of the Oscar-winning film that, coincidentally, also centered on twins. “They opened the door for our audience to embrace and then other audiences to embrace seeing African Americans in these types of genre films.”

Fox adds, “It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been doing this for over three decades, and to see now the stories being told, the films finally being made, is so welcome. Especially for this film, it’s a lot of girl power.”

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In addition to Harris, Fox, Young, and Johnson, the film also features memorable turns from Janelle Monáe and Erika Alexander. Tessa Thompson and Zola co-writer Janicza Bravo serve as producers.

“It’s been a long time coming, darling,” Fox says. “But I welcome it.”

Amen.

Is God Is blesses theaters on May 15.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly