While promoting her upcoming film, Everyone Everywhere All At Once, action legend Michelle Yeoh opened up about her career making some of the best martial arts films in history. One such film is the Jackie Chan classic, Supercop, which involved some of the wildest stunts of Yeoh’s career, including literally riding a motorcycle onto a moving train. However, Yeoh reveals that one particular stunt turned out to be way more difficult than she anticipated, and if it wasn’t for Chan’s quick reaction, she probably would’ve been dead.
During a chase sequence in the film, Yeoh’s character rolls off the back of a moving van into the windshield of a convertible that Chan is driving. From there, she rolls forward onto the road as Chan hits the brakes. In order for the stunt to work, the windshield is supposed to break, giving Yeoh a quick second to ready herself for the roll forward. However, things didn’t go as planned right out of the gate. Via Entertainment Weekly:
The first go-round, Yeoh hit the hood but then fell off the car and hit the road, narrowly avoiding two cars coming up from behind. “The windscreen was supposed to shatter, and that would have helped me have a break,” she says. “But the windscreen didn’t shatter, I had nowhere to hold onto, and I kept sliding off the car. All I remember was like ‘Duhn!’ on the ground. Fortunately, I didn’t go head first. Then I hear Jackie. He was like, ‘Okay, okay, that’s it! Enough! We are finished for the day! We’re not doing anymore! This is stupid! This is ridiculous! We’re not doing it!'”
In an outtake from the film provided to Entertainment Weekly, you can literally see Chan grab Yeoh’s shirt just as she’s about to roll off the side of the car. While Chan’s quick action doesn’t stop Yeoh from tumbling onto the road and into the path of the oncoming vehicles, it did slow her impact, which she credits for not “losing my head.”
Even wilder: The director asked Yeoh if she wanted to try one more time, while she was still lying on the pavement, and she said yes. Fortunately, she nailed it on the next try, proving once again that Michelle Yeoh is badass as hell.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
