Dafne Keen amazed many of us as X-23 in Logan with her ability to stand her own next to veteran X-men Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, a feat that’s difficult to imagine for a child actor. In a clip from her screen test released in anticipation for Logan’s release on Blu-ray May 23 and digital download Tuesday, we see just how perfectly Keen inhabited this role with her own initiative and creativity.
Entertainment Weekly shared the clip, which begins with Stewart describing the circumstance. “James [Mangold] showed me a clip of her audition on camera,” he says, “she was playing a scene and it was very, very good and she asked the director, could she improvise the scene? And she went into her own version of the scene in a mixture of Spanish and English and it’s one of the most extraordinary bits of audition tape I’d ever seen in my life.”
What follows is a tense scene of Keen and Jackman yelling at each other (heads up for NSFW cursing) with an incredible ferocity. “There are qualities you can’t ask of someone to deliver, a level a strength, a sort of stage presence, a maturity that still doesn’t make sense to me,” says producer Hutch Parker, “that felt like she could do this most difficult thing of being an emotional co-star with Hugh and with Patrick and on top of that, also manage the physicality which was demanding. She was really a remarkable discovery.”
“And she came in for the audition and there’s a scene where she punches me in my arm and I went home, and I had bruises all over my arm,” laughs Jackman, “No offense to all the guys I fought, but I’ve never gone home with bruises until that day.” Hopefully we’ll get to see more of Keen in future films, or in more action films in general. What did you think about the clip?
(via io9, Image: screencap)
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