Tough star of ‘Blindspot’ started girls wrestling team

[stymie]

Tough star of ‘Blindspot’ started girls wrestling team

Mike Hughes, For the Lansing State Journal 12:09 a.m. EDT September 20, 2015

Blindspot - Season Pilot

As a kid, Jaimie Alexander was ready for some Texas-tough adventures.

She grew up with four brothers, their initials now tattooed on her arm. Tall (5-foot-9) and fit, she started a girls’ wrestling team at her high school and lost only twice in two years.

This prepared her for something big ... but what?

Well, for being the powerhouse Lady Sif in “Thor” movies in and the “Agents of SHIELD” TV series. And now for being Jane Doe in “Blindspot,” one of the new TV season’s top shows.

Both women are fierce fighters, but Alexander sees a difference: Sif’s “moves are very fancy, graceful, big and glittery in a way. Jane Doe hand-to-hand combat – brutal, efficient, quick and realistic.”

Jane has skills, but doesn’t know why. She also doesn’t know her real name, where she’s from or how she ended up in a bag on Times Square, naked and covered with tattoos that are clues to something.

And yes, that scene was filmed realistically. “There is not a single visual effect .... We really closed down Times Square,” said producer Martin Gero.

The result is impressive. “That was one of the most epic things I’ve ever shot,” said Alexander, 31. “Just to look around and see such an iconic space completely vacant was almost apocalyptic.”

It was also chilly, she said, an unfortunate thing when you’re naked. “The shaking was real .... There were moments I didn’t want to come out of the bag; it was like a little cocoon.”

That was the start of a role filled with challenges.

It included:

•Getting all those fake tattoos. When full-body views are needed, she said, that can take seven-plus hours. “We listen to Beatles on Pandora. We have good coffee, good conversation and the hours fly by.”

•Flashing all those fighting skills. “It’s kind of scary at work,” joked co-star Sullivan Stapleton ... who did plenty of scary fighting in five fierce seasons of cable’s “Strike Back.”

•And whatever other skills we suddenly learn Jane has. At various points, “Blindspot” people say, she might be asked to speak flawless Bulgarian or Malagasy. “I’m game for it all,” Alexander said.

That’s the attitude that she developed growing up in Gravevine, a suburb of 50,000, near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. She liked theater, but isn’t a singer, so switched to sports. She started the wrestling team, she said, “to create an opportunity to learn self-defense for the young women in my grade and the grade below mine .... I’ve always been sort of an activist in pro-equality.”

Now she’s gone far beyond that. She did two seasons on “Kyle XY,” as the female equivalent of the artificially created lead character. She did cable roles – including multiple episodes of “Nurse Jackie” (as Jackie’s wild sister-in-law), “The Brink” (Lt. Gail Sweet) and “Covert Affairs.”

And she was ready to be Sif and Doe, mastering swordplay, martial arts and Malagasy.

WORTH WATCHING

•“Blindspot,” 10:01 p.m. Mondays, NBC, debuting Sept. 21

•Opener then reruns on cable, on NBC’s sister networks. That includes latenight Friday (E) and Saturday (USA), at midnight. Also, 10 a.m. Saturday on Bravo, 9:30 a.m. Sunday on Syfy.

[boyofwinter]

I've met Jaimie and we had a nice very quick chat (not abrupt, I just always try to not be too much of a bother). She was cool in person, not to mention downright stunning. Hope her new show catches on with enough folks.