Tomorrow, Hulu audiences will get to see one of Joey King’s first projects with the streamer under her first look deal…and it’s not anything like you’re expecting. The Princess isn’t a romantic tale of love, but rather a curl up on the couch and hide your eyes action flick that follows a young woman desperately fighting to save her family and kingdom. If that sounds like your kind of film, then you’re in for a bloody good time…emphasis on bloody.
King plays “The Princess,” a young woman who’s been pledged to marry prince Julius (Dominic Cooper), in a bid to unite their two kingdoms. When she refuses his hand at their wedding, things take a turn as Julius shows his true colors, locking her in a tower and taking control of anything he can.
King, Veronica Ngo (Furie, The Old Guard) and director Le-Van Kiet (The Requin, The Ancestral) recently gathered to discuss making this ambitious, violent, and rather exciting period film that sets out to rewrite the classic princess story for an older audience that wants to watch women kick ass.
With her youthful energy and cheery personality, Joey King is one of the most interesting actresses in the industry. She’s funny, cute, and has quite the range of projects on her resume. The Princess is her latest undertaking and this movie paints her in a completely different light: as an action star. For her the experience was “absolutely incredible….I haven't felt this proud of something in so long.”
King was attached to the project before Kiet signed on to direct but the filmmaker had no concerns about his star, “Joey just consistently impressed me, dramatically, but also physically.” Most of the movie features a gown-clad King fighting (she actually performs many of the stunts herself) one on one, or one on 10 which can be daunting, but Kiet stresses, “we just had so much fun, and it really oozes into the film. And luckily, our film is fun.”
Veronica Ngo plays Lin, a skilled warrior who trains the Princess in various styles of fighting. Ngo herself is skilled in martial arts and this marks her third collaboration with Kiet. When he approached her about the movie she was surprised, “from what I knew from him, he's very dark…when he called me and he said, ‘Okay, I'm gonna do a princess movie,’ and I was like what?” While she had experience with Kiet, this was her first time working with King and she was impressed, “She's so talented…I never seen a girl fight like that before.” She further iterated that King was “the best student ever anyone could have.”
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
King was quick to return the praise, “Veronica is obviously extremely experienced in the action world, and she is just an unbelievable fighter. I mean, I knew I had so much to learn from her. She is so clean with her fighting.” In addition to fighting as a team a flashback sequence shows them fighting each other, a challenging scene for both women. “I don't think we actually stopped fighting for 12 hours,” King stated. “If I remember correctly, we wouldn't cut sometimes. We'd just go right into another take and just keep fighting.”
For Ngo, working with King on the scene was stressful at first, “It's better for me to fight with a stunt person…'cause I know they can take a lot….But Joey, she came in…with all that commitment and I saw her training and we trained together.” She further explained, “you're on set, the stress is there and, you know, the people and the camera and the actions go on. It's a lot of stress to carry. I'm super proud of how we pulled it out, and the scene, it's amazing. It looks really real.”
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Both King and Ngo get plenty of chances to show off their fighting skills but there are two scenes in particular that audiences will think about long after the film ends: the kitchen and the staircase. The kitchen mixes up the fighting styles with new weapons and pits our ladies against a female foe, Moira (Olga Kurylenko, Black Widow). This was Kiet’s favorite scene to film. “Shooting-wise, I had a great time with the kitchen scene….by that time in the movie you're kind of tired of the fighting and you've kind of already seen it all. So we gave everybody a different flavor to it. It changed into a much more dramatic but fun element.”
As for the staircase sequence, Kiet said, “it became something very different than what I thought. And there was humor in it, there's attitude to it. Joey just shows it all right there, because that's the center fighting piece of the whole movie.” King goes on to say the entire sequence was “a beast.” A separate staircase was built outside the set so the actors and stunt team could practice. “Shooting of the staircase was something that was really, really heavily anticipated, well before we even started training for the movie,” King recalled. “Every day there was a little bit of staircase training, because it was so massive….but it was so fun. It was so fun,” she reiterated. “And also, when you're training that much with the same people, who are playing all the guys that I'm fighting, you become so close with them.”
The film was shot in Bulgaria over the course of three months and Kiet, King, Ngo only had good things to say about their experience. Kiet praised the people and film crews, “They're great people. They are very committed. They're very gentle. But they are the best at what they do, and we couldn't have done it in any other place.” Ngo loved the food, “Everywhere I go, the first thing is about food,” but she also noted that she’d worked with the stunt crew before, “Many of them, it's the people that I already know from Furie. It was an honor to work with them again. And then to meet new people, and…[just] being in the process of making something amazing.” King loved the food and the people, and she developed a special bond with her trainer, “they're just people that I'll never forget. I'll always hold them in my heart. My trainer in Bulgaria became almost like a father figure to me. He was such a wonderful man.”
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Having a film about a woman fighting to protect what she holds dear, it’s clear that empowerment is a central theme. King says, “one of my favorite things about this movie is how much self doubt there is. I mean, the princess has confidence. She knows she can fight, but she does not know that she can pull this off.” Even in everyday situations, where hand to hand combat isn’t required, the challenge is universal. She goes on to say, “I think what the best part is, no matter how strong or loud your self doubt is, you really can overcome it and pull through and come out on top.” Kiet adds, “I think at the end, people are gonna just have this overall theme that if you trust yourself, if you bet on yourself, that you'll be alright in the end.”
20th Century Pictures’ The Princess premieres July 1st exclusively on Hulu.