Hollywood actor Michelle Lee, who specialises in shooting extreme fight sequences, has acted with Scarlett Johannson in Black Widow. Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Brad Pitt in Bullet Train & Tom Hardy in Venom. She has now been roped in for Salman Khan & Katrina Kaif starrer action spectacle Tiger 3. With Kat, she has delivered the most viral action sequence on the internet in a long, long time – the towel fight scene at a Turkish hammam in Tiger 3!
Michelle isn’t surprised that the towel fight set-piece has become one of the biggest talking points from the Tiger 3 trailer! She reveals Katrina and she had rehearsed for over 2 weeks before they shot the sequence!
She says, “I’m not surprised. I thought it was pretty epic when we were shooting it. We learned and practiced the fight for a couple weeks and then shot it. The set design was absolutely gorgeous and the fight was really fun to do. It was wonderful being on an International film.”
Michelle is all praises for Katrina Kaif whose dedication towards perfecting action sequences has bowled her over. She says, “Katrina was as graceful and professional as can be. She worked really hard on getting the movements precise and making sure all the movements flow. It was clear she had experience in choreography so it was super easy to work with her. We worked up a sweat!”
Michelle says managing the towels wrapped around their bodies was the biggest challenge of this Hammam sequence.
The actress says, “One of the main challenges was definitely the wardrobe! Our towels needed to stay in the proper place and with so much movement and fight choreography, it was definitely a challenge. We ended up having the towels sewn closed at certain points and that helped a lot.”
She adds, “Another challenge was striking each other in the perfect amount of distance so that it looks close enough to be dangerous and strong but far enough to not actually hurt each other. Can you imagine if I actually got her?! But I’m a professional lol. So things went smoothly, neither of us got hit so we just had to make it work for the camera.”
Tiger 3, from the YRF Spy Universe, has been produced by Aditya Chopra and has been directed by Maneesh Sharma. It is set to release this Diwali, Nov 12, Sunday in Hindi, Tamil & Telugu!