This also shows why the action is so great: “John Wick 4” star got a role thanks to YouTube

Rina Sawayama has long been a mega star. As a model and especially as a singer-songwriter, the native Japanese, who grew up in Great Britain and still lives, is extremely successful. In “John Wick 4” we see her as an actress for the first time – and she inspires as Akira. But what’s interesting is how Chad Stahelski became aware of her in the first place.

the magazine the director revealed that he didn’t even know Sawayama and didn’t cast her because of her fame. He discovered it much more by accident while scrolling through YouTube. He found a thumbnail of a video featuring the singer and his first thought was, “That’s an interesting look for Akira!”

Discovery Deep in the “YouTube Rabbit Hole”

After clicking on the video, he “fell deep down YouTube’s rabbit hole”. He saw video after video of the singer and thought to herself, “She dances so well, she must be good for fight scenes too.”

Then he contacted Sawayama. In a making-of video, she reveals how she got the call from the director out of the blue. Just a few days later, she was in Berlin training for the film and shooting her scenes there – because for those who didn’t recognize it: the interior of the Continental Hotel in Osaka, Japan, is in reality largely the International Congress Center Berlin (ICC).

That Chad Stahelski hired a singer with no cinema experience for the important role of Akira perfectly underlines how he understands action and especially why it’s great. Even if the action in the series “John Wick” is brutal, it is not primarily this old genre cinema, where the most muscular guys go to work as brutal as possible.

This modern action – not only in the “John Wick” movies – is based on sophisticated choreography. During the actual shooting on location, they are then varied and adjusted, as the filmmaker told us in the interview, but in the end the preparation is crucial. It is important that everyone knows at all times what step, what movement to make – and this is very similar to dance performances. It’s an action ballet.

Of course, this is not a new discovery or invention by Stahelski and Co. The ingenious full-body comedian Buster Keaton understood this perfectly, so it is no coincidence that he is repeatedly honored in the “John Wick” films. But Stahelski and his team at 87eleven Entertainment are perfecting it. Her choreographies are longer and more complicated, and therefore often more spectacular, than is known from other action productions.

That’s why it’s no problem to cast people who don’t have a big action background yet. If you have exceptional body control and can pull off choreography, which Rina Sawayama has proven in her music videos, chances are it will work with action sequences too – even if it takes a lot of training, as the video with Sawayama attached above underscores.