Exclusive: Adria Arjona Opens Up About ‘Hit Man’, Her Character Madison, & More
Adria Arjona stars in Netflix’s new romantic comedy, Hit Man. Based on somewhat true events, the story follows college professor, Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) who moonlights as a pretend hit man for the police.
To celebrate the release of the new movie, we got the chance to hear from Arjona! During the interview, Arjona talked how she came to be involved in the movie, working with Powell, her character, Madison, and so much more. Check out what she had to say below.
On how she got involved with the film: I first met Rick [Linklater] over Zoom. And it’s always so weird when you talk about people right next to you. But he really is one of my favorite filmmakers. And I always aspired to be sort of an actress, like an actress in one of Rick’s movies. It always feels like his characters are saying words for the first time and it feels so fresh. And I always just found it so beautifully crafted. So when I got on a Zoom with him, I was pretty nervous ’cause all I wanted to do was just to work with him. And we hit it off. And I was encountered with this egoless man who was really interested in picking my brain and wanting to know what I thought of Madison. And that was really refreshing. And that doesn’t happen often and it definitely doesn’t happen with a director like Rick.”
On meeting her costar, Glen Powell: “We just had immediate sort of chemistry. We couldn’t stop talking both about the movie and about our personal lives and how our personal lives could kind of thread into this movie. And we just had the best time.”
On whether she considers Madison a femme fatal: “I think what I was really interested in was the idea of the femme fatal. I think that’s what Madison is sort of playing. She’s a woman that’s coming from a traumatic relationship, this weird kind of dark relationship. And she’s desperate for reinvention. And I think we all do that in life. Where we’re all always trying to find sort of a different version of ourselves. And she’s sort of playing that. She’s kind of looking at Ron and going, what would Ron like? So as a woman, she’s kind of saying, what would a bad boy like Ron want in a woman? So I don’t see Madison as a femme fatal. I see a woman trying to play the illusion of a femme fatal. And that was really fun to play with. I had so much fun sort of crafting that with them, and it felt a little bit more grounded. And that was something that I could do. I wasn’t interested in just being the femme fatal.”
On what makes her character Madison different from other female action comedy characters: “There’s unpredictability to her that makes you wanna go on her journey. That’s probably one of my favorite parts of playing her, or even creating her with Rick and Glen. You kind of never know what she’s gonna do next. And I think that’s fun to watch in a character. I think usually in romantic comedies, it’s always the damsel in distress. She’s always kind of looking to be saved in a way. And in this case, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s not really the case with Madison. She sort of has a backup plan. She’s strong and she’s really smart. And she’s constantly observing Ron and getting information from him while kind of distracting him from what is happening in the actual moment. So that was really fun. She’s also playing a character which I mentioned a little bit earlier. She’s a person playing this other character for this man as opposed to trying to make the man just fall in love with her. So I find that to be really interesting.”
On rehearsing for the text improve scene from the film: “We spoke about that scene so much between the three of us. It was that scene that we just never gave up on. There were so many different iterations of how we might do it. There was like note cards at some point. Once we started sort of getting the feeling of like, oh wait, it’s gonna be a phone. And then, we will have the questions. But I already sort of knew the question. So there was an element of surprise that I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder if that will come, right?’ Because I’m acting with an acting. And there was also like this voice acting that we were kind of doing. And that’s something that was really concerning for me, for it to sound believable to the people in the van.”
On how filming for the text improv scene: “For the day that we filmed it, it felt like we had this perfect choreography. We had this dance so locked down, but we sort of hadn’t heard the music yet. So when we first heard that first action, all of a sudden I start seeing Glen [Powell] kind of guide me through this scene in such a seamless way. And my job really was to follow his lead as much as I could. And it was one of those scenes where we didn’t stop looking at each other. I looked at every gesture that he did, and it triggered something in me. So I feel like it’s a scene where teamwork was so important and so crucial. And I don’t think I’ve done that before in any movie. For this scene, we had to be symbiotic for it to work. And it was also so much fun. We didn’t really shoot it for that long because we rehearsed it and talked about it so much. We shot it in like a few hours, which is so crazy when you watch the movie.”
On how preparations ahead of filming paved for a better shooting experience: “It says a lot about the way that Rick sort of works and his process. Everything is sort of locked down in rehearsal. So by the time that you’re on set, there’s no doubt, there’s no figuring things out. You know exactly what you’re doing. And for me, it was so refreshing because, you know, I could go to sleep every day at peace that we did what we set out to do. And I wish more people would work like that. I miss it.”
Hit Man will be released in select theaters on May 24 and premieres on Netflix in select countries on June 7.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo Credit: Rick Kern/Getty Images for Netflix