This summer, Hulu has a few new titles up its sleeve, including a brand new action-packed fairytale, The Princess. Directed by Le-Van Kiet, this new film is about the titular princess (Joey King) being kidnaped after refusing to marry a cruel man. She won't take this sitting down and fights to free herself and save her father's kingdom with the help of her mentor and friend Linh (Veronica Ngo). At a press conference attended by CBR, King, Ngo, and Kiet spoke about the stunts and challenges of The Princess, including how King insisted she do as many stunts as she could herself.
"The only reason I felt like I could do these things is because of Kiet and Veronica and the entire stunt team, as well," King described. "They all lifted me up so much. No one made me feel like I couldn't do anything. My two stunt doubles, who became great friends of mine, they wanted me to do everything that I could. They wanted to train me to be the best that I could be."
It was truly a group effort to bring these action pieces and stunts to life, as seen during one of Kiet's favorite scenes, the staircase scene. As Kiet mentioned, this scene was a centerpiece for the whole film, and it brought something different compared to the other action viewers will see, including attitude and humor.
King described how the "shooting of the staircase was something that was really, really heavily anticipated, well before we even started training for the movie. It was just one of these things that we were like, 'This is the big thing of the movie.' We were creating all these worlds around it, all these fights around it, all these things around it. There was a separate wooden set built outside of the staircase that was a replica of the staircase so that we could train on it every day. It was a massive undertaking, but it was so fun."
"Also, when you're training that much with the same people who are playing all the guys that I'm fighting," King continued, "you become so close with them, and you come to trust them so much. So filming that scene -- obviously, it looked so scary. I'm surrounded by all these big men, and they're trying to kill me, but I was just surrounded by my friends who were trying to kill me, and it was so fun… They're so talented, those stuntmen who just wholly commit every single time. When you see them committing like that every time… I've got to bring my A-game, too."
King lived up to this, bringing her A-game to training and set, where she described not only falling "in love with the martial arts process" but also getting to try her hands at an action film. This opportunity, as well as the stunt work, came with lots of training.
"It's more than just getting your form," King explained. "You get hurt while you're training, and the training process helps you to not be head shy anymore when you get hurt, to go into the next take. There were a couple times I got kicked in the head and hurt my back, but you have to know the next take you can't be afraid of that and anticipate it. You just have to go full throttle, and that's where the training really comes in handy."
This training came in handy for a few reasons. One, the lesson about pushing forward even when nervous complements the overall themes of the film. King took away from The Princess that "if you trust yourself, if you bet on yourself, that you'll be all right in the end." Along with that, there was an incident on set -- specifically during a flashback sequence -- and this training, as well as the supportive cast and crew, helped everyone through it.
"We had a flashback sequence of us [King and Ngo] fighting together," King shared, "and the reason why that was the most challenging scene is 'cause I don't think we actually stopped fighting for 12 hours. All the cameras were kind of already where they needed to be, and we would just kind of move them around us if I remember correctly, and we wouldn't cut sometimes. We'd just go right into another take and just kept fighting."
"I hurt Veronica's finger so bad that day," King said. "I accidentally hit her super hard with the sword, and her finger was bleeding so bad. I felt so bad, but again, she's so amazing; she's so professional. She wasn't head shy the next time we went into it."
While there was an injury, they were able to move forward with the film. The scene also became a favorite for Ngo and King. Ngo reminisced on how shooting this fight choreography with King felt overall, and she remarked that there can be concerns when fighting another actor, not a stunt person, but the two of them put in the work and felt confident in what they could do together.
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"I am very concerned when I come into a fight scene with another actress," Ngo described, "'cause we need a lot of training. It's better for me to fight with a stunt person, but fighting with another actress is giving me a lot of stress. But Joey, she came in, like I said already, with all that commitment. I saw her training, and we trained together. We felt confident. Again, when you're on set, the stress is there, and the people and the camera and the actions go on. It's a lot of stress to carry, but I'm super proud of how we pulled it out, and the scene -- it's amazing. It looks really real."
While the scene worked out, it's important to acknowledge the dangers of actors doing their own stunts, too. Kiet remarked that "I think a lot of people don't understand how dangerous it is for you to take that risk." Ngo's injury was not something to overlook, but it was also not the end of production. Kiet dove deeper into what happened, as well as how the entire crew stepped up during such a challenging scene.
"It was actually bad," Kiet described, "'cause I came to Veronica, and I looked at her knuckles, and they literally looked like she was in a brawl. I was with Joey. I was like, 'Joey, don't worry. These things happen. It's an action movie,' A lot of this speaks to who stepped up because Veronica is right. We couldn't shoot it like in stunt double because it was all wides because it was our first time being outside. So we were doing wides, going into a single, so we couldn't cut, and they knew that, but there was no complaints. They just stepped it up." Action and stunts are hard, and there is no shortage of both in The Princess. Films like this, as Kiet, Ngo, and King explained, are truly a collaborative effort.
To see how Kiet, King, Ngo, and company pieced it together, check out The Princess on Hulu July 1.