Over at the Wall Street Journal, Ben Cohen has an extremely enjoyable breakdown of Boban Marjanovic’s star turn in John Wick 3. At 7-foot-3 and 290 pounds, Boban, then with the Clippers, was handpicked to play a large assassin in a library fight scene alongside Keanu Reeves—and for much of the shoot, alongside Reeves’s stunt double, Jackson Spidell. Though Marjanovic is more than comfortable throwing his weight around in the post against other athletes, he was a little hesitant to do the same on camera against the average-sized:
When it was time for action, [director Chad] Stahelski directed him to kick Spidell. “Boban, being a nice guy, said, ‘No, no, no, you don’t really want me to kick him,’” Stahelski said. No, no, no, they said. That was exactly what they wanted. Only when they assured him that it was Spidell’s job to get kicked in the chest was Marjanovic comfortable mangling his friend.
“We had calculated the stunt man was going to land about eight feet away,” Stahelski said. “He landed about 15 feet away.”
“At least it wasn’t a car?” Spidell said.
But the upside of getting hit by a car is that the car doesn’t apologize in the middle of the scene. Marjanovic felt so badly that he forgot he was acting and expressed his remorse on camera. Stahelski called for a cut and ordered Marjanovic to kick Spidell again.
Draymond Green should feel grateful that Boban has never been tempted to feed him a dose of his own medicine.
[WSJ]