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They Will Kill You EXCLUSIVE: Zazie Beetz reveals character Asia Reaves’ fight for survival and how she prepped for it
Speaking exclusively to us, Zazie Beetz shared how she ended up working on herself for the role of playing Asia Reaves.
A New York ex-convict hunts for a job after getting released from prison. Answering a housekeeper role ad, she ends up entangled in a bunch of disappearances in the city. Written and directed by Kirill Sokolov, with Alex Litvak, Zazie Beetz stars as the protagonist Asia Reaves, and exclusively spoke about her work for the film.
The actress spoke about how director Kirill Sokolov planned ‘every minute, every second of this movie,’ which they discussed on Zoom, which eventually made her decide to take on the film. As for her own horror film experience, she revealed that although They Will Kill You has its own fair share of jump scares, it’s not heavy on that. However, she confirmed that there’s ‘squelching and blood and eyeballs,’ making this film interesting.
Sharing how her character fought to live through the night, she revealed, “The Virgil is a Satanic cult, and they have human sacrifices, and Asia is next. Usually, they're looking for people who are alone, [who] won't have people checking in on them, who they don't expect can fight back. So, she's fighting, and they're completely shocked. They're also not necessarily fighters themselves, and Asia’s not a trained military person or anything, she’s kind of just scrappy and wild and clumsy at times. Which I really liked. Her character isn't this machine, but she's doing the best she can. She's just kind of figuring it out with the tools and the context and the situation that she has in front of her.”
Revealing how she trained for the film, Zazie Beetz shared, “Actually, I was shooting a different movie in Cape Town, and I started training when I was there, then I went home for a month and got a trainer, Michael Olajide, who's incredible. He specializes in boxing, he was a boxer, and he’s truly such a beautiful soul, beautiful man. That was great. When I was home, five days a week, I'd train with him for about two hours, just getting the boxing motion as ingrained in my body as possible. Then I went to set, and I was doing stunt training every day for three weeks before we started shooting.”
Sharing the details of the actual work that went into They Will Kill You, she added, “We would train, but the focus was kind of more on a little bit of conditioning, and then learning the fights, which ends up being a bit more choreography-based, so it's less physically demanding than actually working out, weight lifting, and doing that kind of thing. We were doing it all, and your girl was tired! But they were really big on not burning me out, which I really appreciated. It made such a huge difference. I just cannot emphasize that enough. I think it allowed me to have the stamina to be doing all the action in this movie.”
Meanwhile, They Will Kill You is all set to premiere on March 27, 2026.
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