In 2017, Mary J. Blige took both the film and music worlds by storm with her performance as Florence Jackson in Dee Rees’ overlooked period epic Mudbound. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 90th Academy Awards. Flash forward to 2019, and the Queen of Hip Hop Soul is taking her acting game to new heights.
In Netflix’s upcoming superhero family series The Umbrella Academy, the singer revealed that she did all of her stunts for her role as Cha-Cha, a tuxedo-clad time-traveling assassin.
“I went all the way for Cha-Cha,” Blige said in an interview with Variety. “The stunt work was amazing. I did a lot of my own stunts. I did a lot of my own fights.”
Mary J. Blige did many of her own stunts for #TheUmbrellaAcademy pic.twitter.com/tUVfIvrKlk
— Variety (@Variety) February 13, 2019
Blige further detailed the extent of her stunt work: “I was hanging from wires, for real,” she continued. “I was pulling glass out of my face. It was crazy.”
Blige’s risk-taking approach to her character did not go unnoticed. The singer-actress earned praise and awe from actor Cameron Britton, who portrays a fellow assassin on The Umbrella Academy.
“She was up at six in the morning on Saturday to do martial arts while I was still midway through my sleep patterns,” Britton said of Blige.
The Umbrella Academy is set to premiere on Netflix on February 15.
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