Netflix’s highly anticipated action film Kate is now streaming. Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the titular role, the film also features Woody Harrelson, Miku Martineau, and Miyavi. The film is directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan.
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“Meticulous and preternaturally skilled, Kate is the perfect specimen of a finely tuned assassin at the height of her game,” says the official synopsis of Kate. “But when she uncharacteristically blows an assignment targeting a member of the yakuza in Tokyo, she quickly discovers she’s been poisoned, a brutally slow execution that gives her less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her killers. As her body swiftly deteriorates, Kate forms an unlikely bond with the teenage daughter of one of her past victims.”
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Kate stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Miku Martineau about the film’s action scenes, working with Miyavi and Woody Harrelson, and the interesting way the two actresses bonded on set.
Tyler Treese: Mary, I thought Miyavi was so great in this film and you have such a great fight scene with him. I was so impressed, especially because it was two actors fighting. How was it like working with him?
Mary Elizabeth Winstead: So great. I mean, he was so dedicated and he really didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse because he was on tour. So he kind of had to come in and just like have a couple of days to learn the fight and go straight into it. I was amazed at how quickly he picked it up, his physicality, and his intensity.
It was exciting for me to fight him because we hadn’t had that time together. So it made it feel a little bit more real. So it was kind of like the way that I feel about acting scenes. I like not having too much rehearsal and not having it go to like, oh, we’ve done this before, but I’d never done that before in a fight scene. That’s a whole other level of danger involved. So when I think about it, I still get a little bit of like butterflies. It was kind of scary, but really exciting. We hurt each other a little bit, but we made it out unscathed.
Miku, I’d love to know what it meant for you just to land this great role, but then also getting to film in Japan?
Miku Martineau: Absolutely amazing. I will be forever grateful that Cedric and Mary took a chance on me and gave me this opportunity. I had the best time. It was also so great filming in Japan. My mom’s Japanese, so we got to visit family and they got to come to set, which was really nice. We were actually filming in an area where my mom grew up. So it was very sweet.
Oh, that’s amazing. Mary, your character has such an interesting relationship with Woody Harrelson’s character because he trained you and he’s sorta like the closest thing you have to family, but he’s also this selfish manipulator and he set you down this life. Can you speak to working with Woody and that unique relationship that plays out in the film?
Winstead: Yeah. I mean, Woody is the best. He’s exactly what you would hope he would be from watching all of his films. He’s so laid back. He’s funny. He’s such a character to kind of have around, and so he was a great, great energy. Also he’s so easy to kind of bond with, and to have a quick rapport with, which was really important for Kate and Varrick to have that, to feel like there is something real there.
But I think it’s really relatable. Like a lot of parental figures, you don’t really know until you’re older that you may be had a bit of a toxic relationship with somebody growing up. So I think even though [it] might not seem that easy to relate to someone who’s an assassin. Who’s been trained to be an assassin since they were young. In a way, a lot of us have been there with relationships that we’ve had to sort of break free from in our own way. So I think you see that in the film is sort of push and pull of this parental relationship. That’s maybe not so healthy.
Miku, I read that you wound up bonding with Mary by playing songs on a ukulele on set. I would love to hear more about this. Were you singing original compositions? Were they covers? What went on there?
Martineau: Well, we weren’t making originals. We weren’t that advanced. Uh, but yeah, one day I saw Mary Bernie ukulele decide and I was like, oh my goodness, I didn’t know. You could play like I can play too. So I brought my ukulele to set and then Cedric saws playing. He was like, oh my gosh, I can play like that. And so between takes, we would just, um, search up covers to some songs and play them. And it was very nice to have that calm setting and all that chaos and scene.
I’m just imagining dueling banjos, but with ukuleles now.
Winstead: I know [laughs]. No, it was very like she’s got such a lovely calming voice. It was very nice for me in between the stabbings and the shootings to sit with Miku and have a nice, quiet ukulele time.