If you’re into superhero and comic book content, but you find the Marvel Cinematic Universe just a tad too overwhelming to keep up with, they’ve got you covered with the first of what they’ve labeled a “Marvel Spotlight” series — that is, a standalone series that doesn’t require a whole lot of homework beforehand for you to enjoy it. In Echo, Alaqua Cox reprises her role as the title character, known to regular folks as Maya Lopez, who happens to be deaf and first appeared in the MCU series Hawkeye. There, it was revealed that she worked for the series villain, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, before she not so quietly parted ways with him, and Echo follows up on those events with Kingpin hot on Maya’s trail.
Ahead of Echo’s release on Disney+, Cox, D’Onofrio, co-stars Chaske Spencer and Devery Jacobs, director Sydney Freeland, and executive producer Richie Palmer sat down with RT correspondent Perri Nemiroff to talk about the show, touching on how they mapped the choreography of each fight scene, what Kingpin’s return means, what viewers can expect, and more.
Perri Nemiroff for Rotten Tomatoes: So the first thing I want to touch on is an epic fight scene that we see in the first episode. It’s the warehouse fight scene. And I’m curious, given that fight scene is made to look like a [single continues shot], what is the single most difficult part of that fight choreography for you?
Alaqua Cox: In the warehouse, the most difficult part is when I enter the room for the first time and I see the fight happening. That choreography, there’s a lot of stuff involved. There’s punching, there’s choking — I have to choke a guy as well. And then from that point on it was continued and we did not stop. But that was probably the hardest part, but it was so fun, and we had to fight with the heat — literally, the temperature that was inside the building as well. We had fans of course, but when we were rolling we had to turn the fans off and so it was very sweaty. But it was just so fun. That was probably the challenging part.
(Photo by Chuck Zlotnick/©Marvel Studios)
RT: So the next fight I want to touch on is your fight with Daredevil, because we do get a glimpse of that in the trailer. Can you tell us a little bit about working on that fight and maybe in particular the things you were able to do to enhance how different Echo and Daredevil’s fight styles are?
Cox: Yeah, so obviously they have both different fighting styles. I’m deaf and he is blind. So yeah, I only worked with him for a day, but we did do a lot of practice with the choreography and the stunt training beforehand. We had some sessions before that, but I was able to learn that choreography with Daredevil the last minute on the same day. So it was very much get up and go, very fast paced, and it was new choreography with Daredevil, so that was probably the challenge.
Watch the video for the full interview with Alaqua Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Chaske Spencer, Devery Jacobs, Sydney Freeland, and Richie Palmer.
Echo: Season 1
(2024)
premiers on Disney+ on January 9, 2024.
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