Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
Jaimie Alexander got her big break as Jessi on the ABC Family TV series Kyle XY. Her star has only risen this past year with a role as Sif in the film adaptation of the Marvel comic Thor and a role as Tunie Payton in the Showtime TV series Nurse Jackie.
Now the 27 year-old’s latest film is Loosies, which stars The Twilight Saga star Peter Facinelli as a pickpocket. Alexander talks about how she first got a hold of the script.
“Well, it was the funny thing, my manager, who is also Peter Facinell’s manager, sent me the script,” Jaimie recalls, “He said, ‘You got to read this. I really thing this is you,’ And I said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ And I just got done doing Thor, so I was a little out of it and a little too buff to play anybody but a superhero. And, so I look at it and I’m like, ‘This is so great. I want to play a normal girl, like today’s woman.’ And so, I fought and fought for it. I read with Peter, he was auditioning a few other girls. There were a few other choices that they had, aside from me.”
“And then as time went by, collectively, they narrowed it down to me and I was so thrilled and so ready to do this and I always wanted to shoot in New York and all this other stuff,” she continues, “So, yeah, I read it and the script is so well-rounded and it ties together perfectly and there’s so many surprises that you don’t see coming and that’s the best thing, because normally, you’re like, this is going to happen and that’s really boring, OK. Well, reading it was like, I had no idea it was going to happen and there’s so much life in it and to think he wrote it in a few days is crazy.”
Jaimie mentions how impressed she was that Facinelli managed to write
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
the script in merely days.“I remember talking to him and asking him, ‘Where did you get this idea to do this?’” Alexander remembers, “He said, ‘You know, I work in New York a lot. I go to play pool at a bar,’ and he gets these characters from real life. They’re based on people he’s met for and I think that’s what gave it its realism and heart, that it came from real life.”
Alexander talks about the experience of shooting Loosies in New York City.
“It was a little tougher than I had anticipate, but it kept us all on our toes,” Jaimie says, “We all work together, sometimes I’d move the light or do something. That’s what it should be, it’s artistic, and showcasing New York the way that we did was so great. And it gives you the feeling that the city still has the romanticism that it used to have back in the 40s and 50s and what not. It’s a character on its own.”
We asked Jaimie if there were any areas she did not hit during the shoot.
“I don’t think so,” she replies, “We went everywhere in the city to film. It was so great because half the crew took Peter and half the crew took me and we did separate montage things and I said, ‘Well, let’s start in Central Park. Can we do Central Park?’ And Peter was so open to these ideas, which was so awesome. And I said, ‘You know, I see you’re photographing kids in the park,’ and he sort of had that idea, too.”
“And so, we all went our separate ways for twelve hours and I ended up like in a church, which probably for sure wasn’t legal,” Alexander adds, “And Grand Central Station and all these places. We watched each other’s footage, all of us, all the crew and everybody together, and we’re like, ‘How did you get the guy to do the thing with
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
the cigarette,’ and he goes, ‘He just did it,’ and he was like, ‘How did you get in the church?’ And I was like, ‘Don’t ask questions.’ ‘It’s fine.’ So yeah, though, it was great. We had such a blast.”Alexander says the unpredictability of the city was what made shooting in New York City so exciting.
“Not knowing what’s coming next is the best,” Jaimie says, “ That’s why life is so exciting in general. And at times, they would just say, ‘OK, go do something,’ or ‘Go fiddle with something.’ In the church, I said, you know what, I’m going to light a candle. Or in Grand Central Station, I’m going to look around. It’s a little overwhelming. So it’s very much I brought myself a lot of myself to the character, just to make sure it came across realistic, that these things happen and do happen everyday, stuff like that.”
Jaimie talks about the interesting friends she met during the shoot.
“A lot of the costume ladies,” Alexander says, “I had a great friend, Rebecca. She was so great and I’m still in touch with her. Of course, Peter probably made more friends because every time we ran a scene, you’d hear these women of all ages, and some men, screaming, and you’re like, oh, man.”
“Like that was a good take, man, and they’d come up to him and they’re like, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah. Cut! Cut!’” she continues, “And it would happen all the time and I thought it was the funniest thing. I told him at the end, we should have a blooper reel when these people would run up and it was pretty funny.”
Alexander talks about her own brush with fans after having done Thor.
“It’s definitely weird to be around the whole fame thing and it’s starting to happen a little bit more to me now,” she says, “And I’m always really grateful because I’m like,
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
thanks for liking my stuff and that will keep me in business and that sort of thing. But seeing how crazy they go, one girl started crying and she fell to the ground and was like holding to her other friend and I’m like, oh, my God! And it was so funny because he loves it.”“You can tell he’s appreciative, but he also gets kind of nervous, and I was like don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” Jaimie adds, “It was always really funny and it never really delayed us that much. It was a short thing and they were allowed to watch us film a scene and I think that was great for them, so it was good. It can be overwhelming sometimes, it can be kind of scary, but fun. It’s exciting. When you’re going to film in a city, with a lot of tourists as well, you just got to have to know. And that’s where our acting abilities come in. That’s when it becomes the job that we have to do and you just got to make sure that you can do it again.”
Jaimie shared with us her rather unique story of how she first got into acting.
“Well, when I was 17, I had a friend in high school in Texas, where I grew up, she got really sick, she got her wisdom teeth out,” she says, “And she had paid a scouting agency to be in this runway showcase thing in Dallas, and we’re about the same size, and she said, ‘Hey, you got to fill in for me. They won’t give me my money back.’ I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do? I wrestled in high school. Do you really want me to wear a dress and walk down a runway? It’s going to be really comedic. So I went and it was crazy, and at the time, my manager, who’s still my manager today, was
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
in the crowd and he had went because his wife’s friend was in labor. So that’s why he ended up there.”“He said, free trip to Texas, you never know what could happen, and we ended up meeting,” Alexander continues, “I finished high school. I waited like a year and a half or two before I moved out to L.A. And I moved out there. I was like, yeah, I’ll give it a shot. I have four brothers. College is not going to come super cheap for me. So I’m going to do this first and see if I can make money for school. So, then, I started to, it took me a while because I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing, but after a while, I started to work more constantly and I said, OK, this is great. I like this, and I was always kind of a goof anyway, so it’s right up my alley. I was always a huge fan of film and all that stuff. It was in me, I just was more of an athlete because I grew up around my brothers and it was sort of the thing.”
Alexander talks about how it was her athlete mentality that has allowed her to endure her roles, particularly her one in Thor
“Yeah, especially the action films I’ve done, I’ve definitely seen that come in handy, because the training for Thor was really rough,” she says, “And I trained again. I just did a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger called Last Stand and that was another action one. It wasn’t heavy as Thor was physically, but lots of guns.”
“But, yeah, so that comes in handy when you’re like, OK, you got to get that fighter mentality,” Jaimie adds, “Like, hey, I can make it to this hour, but I also need to go to bed at this hour and make sure I wake up. And to get up and work out in
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
the mornings is such a pain in the ass, but you got to do it because otherwise, you’ll feel sick, you don’t feel well, because all you are doing is sitting around and waiting a lot at work, so a lot of times, you’re going to become lethargic and sick by sitting around not moving a lot.”We interjected that the craft service table on film sets is another obstacle.
“We got lucky on Thor because all of us had to be really careful and they put out healthy options for food,” Alexander replies, “If they put out the peanut butter M&M’s, it’s like, ‘Forget it.’ You got to hide those for me, or salt & vinegar chips, those are my other favorites, one extreme to the other.”
Alexander talks about how she had to dial back her level of physical activity in Thor for her role in Loosies
“I was like, listen, what is this?” Jaimie recalls, “You’re guiding me down the street. I was like, OK, let me show you how it’s done. No, it was pretty funny, because there’s this scene where, there’s two bad scenes, one is where I punch him in the stomach and it looks way too much like I was a pro boxer, so I was like, ‘Pete, this looks bad.’ He was like, ‘You know what, it was a great take,’ But I was like, ‘It looks like I box. I punched you like Muhammad Ali. You can’t have it to be more…because I didn’t want to slap him and he wanted me to slap him. I was like, ‘I’m not going to slap you.’ He was like, ‘Slap me,’ and I’m like, ‘No.’ So he goes, ‘OK, then punch me in the stomach.’ I was like, ‘OK, just wait a second. We got to stunt punch. I know how to stunt punch, just back up a little bit.’ It was pretty funny.”
“Then, there was a scene where my character
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
ends up telling him she’s pregnant and she does slap him, well, we couldn’t position the cameras correctly to get the slap, so I actually had to hit him really hard,” she continues, “And he said it, but I was like, ‘Alright, I’m only doing it once.’ I was like, ‘If it doesn’t work, we’re going to fake it and I’m not going to slap you.’ Because I was like, ‘I’m not,’ and I left a huge welt on his face. I felt so bad. We had to actually end up shooting my coverage clean and we had to wait for his face to go down. I mean, I didn’t hit his ear. It could have been worse, but they said at Video Village, when they were watching the take and listening, that they had to take the earphones out because it cracks so loud that it was super-loud. Anyways, I’m going to stop talking. It’s embarrassing. I don’t like to hit people, but I keep getting asked to.”We then asked Jaimie if she felt Facinelli regretted letting her hit him.
“If he did, he didn’t tell me, because I already felt bad enough,” Alexander answers, “I can’t believe he made me hit him for real, but, yeah, I’m sure it stung, because his eyes kind of watered up when I did it. So I turn around really quick and run down the stairs, but I felt so bad. I’m pretty sure that it hurt really badly. I’d like to think he did.”
Alexander goes on to note how much of a pleasure it was working with Peter Facinelli
“If I worked with people that I just didn’t like, I’d be like, ‘Absolutely, stand still.’ But he’s so great. He’s so nice and super laid back,” she says, “Anytime I had any questions about anything in the script, he’s like, ‘Yeah, sit down. Let’s talk about it.’ Anytime I thought, hey, can we try this scene this way,
Jaimie Alexander
"Ass Kicking in any Dimension..."
he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s improv something,’ and I was like, ‘Really?’”“And he had an awful lot of faith in my abilities and I guess talent or whatever to really give me that freedom to do that and be so hell-bent on things being this way or being that way,” Jaimie adds, “ I actually learned a ton from that and I think it’s made my other performances afterwards so much stronger because of that. It was an awesome experience and everybody was really great.”
We asked Jaimie about what she learned about filmmaking from her early days doing TV compared to Loosies
“Man, TV, I would say, doing Kyle XY and all that, I mean, those hours are rough,” Alexander remembers, “Those are long and you got to keep things fresh. The thing is when you play a character for more than a year, it starts to get like, oh, I know what she does in this. I get it. I get it, but the best thing to do is improv a little bit, because then, you’ll go, oh, that’s interesting and that sort of thing. So I definitely would bring more improv to television because things can get pretty stale and there’s a formula, it’s like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
“Nurse Jackie, on the other hand, that was a lot more fun,” she adds, “We got to improv a little bit and the kids at the table were always doing something funny or whatever and being goofy and everything. They were also pretty cool about, well, what if we all had these crazy barrettes in our hairs. And they said, ‘Definitely, it’s a great idea.’ But they are more structured. Film, you can get away with much more. TV, it’s like, no, this is the way the 18 writers want it to be and 47 producers and it’s like, ‘OK.’ ‘Don’t switch “and”, “but”. You have to say “and.” “And”, not “but”.’ I
