Olivia Munn Reveals Stress Behind Epic Fight Scene In X-Men: Apocalypse

Olivia Munn’s Psylocke doesn’t have as much screen time as some of her fellow castmates, but she definitely made the most of the time she had.

If she looks completely comfortable onscreen, it’s because of all the hard work she put in behind the scenes. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actress spoke a bit about her training for those scenes.

“I knew it was up to me to be able to deliver. So thankfully my fight scene was the last thing we shot. So when I wasn’t on set shooting, I was able to go and train. The producers and [director] Bryan [Singer] and everyone was so supportive. I started training six to seven hours a day from stunts to wire work and martial arts and swords. One thing you can’t cheat is sword work. The more I can do, the more I could learn, the more they had to use and the more options they had for Psylocke. I was lucky that by the time we got to shooting I had been training for so long so that anything they asked I was able to do for the most part. “

She was so prepared that she somewhat stunned fellow actor Nicholas Hoult, who plays Beast in the film. He said: “Olivia went to like level-seven ninja. And then I kind of rolled up on the day and I was totally under-prepared — I must admit on that. I was so lucky it wasn’t a fight for real or she would have definitely done me in.”

One of her big scenes was filmed at the very end of production, and theywere cutting things pretty close.

“We were literally pushing into overtime. It’s one of those things where I know no one is gonna approve another couple hundred thousand dollars to go an extra day for me. It’s literally the last hour. I had to get on top of this really high platform and jump off, flip and land on a dime with swords and make sure I don’t face plant into the camera. And we had 30 minutes. That was a scary but very satisfying finish.”

X-Men: Apocalypse is in theatres now.