\tMaya Erskine, who was Emmy-nominated for her portrayal of Jane Smith in Prime Video\u2018s \u201cMr. & Mrs. Smith,\u201d sat down with Variety\u2019s Angelique Jackson at an FYC event to talk about forming a bond with her co-star Donald Glover, preparing for the physicality the role required and what drew her to Jane as an outsider character.<\/p>\n
\tA vital element of the show\u2019s success and 16 Emmy nominations was Erskine and Glover\u2019s on-screen chemistry. Yet the two didn\u2019t have a single chemistry read before being cast together.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cBasically he talked to me on FaceTime three times and I had no idea what he was talking to me about,\u201d Erskine recalled. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t making it clear to me, wasn\u2019t talking to me. He wanted to know my vibe and that was sort of his way of assessing if we had chemistry or something there.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tWhat ultimately drew Erskine to playing Jane Smith and saying yes to the show was the central theme of arranged marriage.<\/p>\n
\tErskine described the pitch: \u201cIt was this take on marriage with the spy backdrop so you\u2019re getting these grand, Bond moments but then it\u2019s all these nuanced parts of a relationship. That was really exciting to me to see that pairing because I\u2019ve never seen that before. With Jane especially, I identified with someone who feels like such an outsider in life, never quite fitting in and looking for her identity to be solidified in this world. I think that\u2019s something we can all relate to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBut of course, like previous takes on the \u201cMr. & Mrs. Smith\u201d story, the show offers plenty of action sequences. Erskine trained for several months to feel confident in the physicality of playing Jane and performing stunts.<\/p>\n
\tErskine said: \u201cI was not a gym person when I started this and I had to become one. I had also just given birth. Donald [Glover] kept asking, \u2018Are you sure you want this?\u2019 He kept asking because he was like, \u2018It\u2019s going to be a lot.\u2019 And it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tErskine jokingly described how in the first episode, she faked the action by doing the \u201cTom Cruise run\u201d that she was taught.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhich makes it seem like you\u2019re actually running fast when you\u2019re not,\u201d Erskine explained. \u201cThen I started to run more and more. I got a little better by the eighth episode. We were running all over New York and the stairs \u2026 You learn fast from that.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tAnother crucial element of figuring out Jane\u2019s character was her wardrobe.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cSometimes we veered on too masculine or too feminine,\u201d Erskine said. \u201cWe were trying to find this rich version of what Jane herself would wear, which is interesting because you would walk into this company [that] knows exactly what you would want to buy if you had the money so they all have those clothes for you \u2026 figuring out what that was exactly was a pretty big challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maya Erskine, who was Emmy-nominated for her portrayal of Jane Smith in Prime Video\u2018s \u201cMr. & Mrs. Smith,\u201d sat down with Variety\u2019s Angelique Jackson at an FYC event to talk about forming a bond with her co-star Donald Glover, preparing for the physicality the role required and what drew her to Jane as an outsider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}