Actor Jessica Alba was more than grateful for the opportunity to star in James Cameron’s Dark Angel. But the feature took its toll in many ways. Because of this, Alba figured this more lighthearted romp was the perfect answer for the sci-fi show.
The film that helped Jessica Alba heal from ‘Dark Angel’
Alba has been very candid about the grueling schedule she experienced when shooting Dark Angel. Playing the formidable cyborg required more than just memorizing lines for Alba and Cameron. She had to embody the physicality of a soldier, which required a dedicated training regimen. So Alba’s schedule for the series might’ve made it one of the hardest projects she’s ever done.
“Dark Angel was intense for me,” Alba said according to Black Film. “It was impossible for me. I worked on the weekends, 10 ½ months a year, in the cold, in Vancouver; with night shoots 4 to 5 days a week. I would leave at dark after working and come back at dark and then it was raining. I wanted something that light and fun and just goodhearted and between Sept.11 and the war, to me, I just felt like it would be such a breathe of fresh air to go and have an experience that it’s not a thinking movie but a predicable story.”
That predictable story was Honey, where Alba played a talented hip-hop dancer who was on the rise. The movie didn’t do too well critically or commercially, but it was exactly the kind of film Alba needed at the time.
“It’s all these things that are not that deep but it’s a good time and there’s good music,” she said.
Jessica Alba wouldn’t mind doing a ‘Dark Angel’ reboot
Alba has come a long way from her Dark Angel days. In addition to Honey, she’s starred in a variety of movies over the years. Some, like Good Luck Chuck, offered the kind of fun, predictable movies that Alba enjoyed doing every now and then. Others like Sin City might’ve been even darker than Dark Angel.
Still, despite Alba’s, she kept Cameron’s Fox series close to her heart. So much so that Alba was receptive to doing a reboot years later, but only if Cameron was still involved.
“Oh my goodness, would I do Dark Angel again? If Jim wanted to do Dark Angel, I would do Dark Angel again,” Alba told ET not too long ago. “Yeah, ’cause he really has been a mentor of mine and it would just be fun to work with him. We have that history together and I admire him so much, so I think it would be fun.”
Given how much the world has advanced in real life, Alba was very intrigued by how a rebooted Dark Angel might fair today. Ironically, time in the real world has now gone past the year Dark Angel was originally set in, which was 2019.
“[Dark Angel] was ahead of its time, for sure, but it would be really interesting just to see where Jim and Chuck would take it knowing what we know now about AI and everything, yeah, and just where technology is. It would be cool to see how, where they would dream,” Alba said.
How ‘Dark Angel’ helped Jessica Alba’s recent film ‘Trigger Warning’
Dark Angel is still affecting Alba’s work to this day. Recently, she starred in the Netflix movie Trigger Warning, where Alba played a special forces officer dealing with a personal crime in her hometown. The thriller saw Alba utilizing muscles she hadn’t used in years as an action star. But the Honest Company founder credited her time in Dark Angel for shaping her Trigger Warning performance.
“I mean, that was the first big role that I ever had, and it really laid the foundation for me. As far as doing action, it was fun. I felt very empowered, and I feel like I haven’t been able to really use those skill sets that I developed so early in my career until now,” she said in an interview with Comic Book Resources.
“I mean, this is really the first movie I get to use all that hand-to-hand combating and … really infuse all of that,” she continued. “And then I got to learn knife fighting, which I’ve never done.”
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