“It would have been too intense to handle, but they did try it in some of those screen tests!” she says. Only Ahmanet’s double-irised eyes were generated in postproduction. “The longest makeup session was six hours, and even the shortest was four hours.”Īnd while many big-screen baddies these days involve computer-generated accoutrements, almost all of Boutella’s main mummy look was done for real, from those all-over tattoos to her long, precarious nails. “We wanted to find something that’s never been done,” she says. That meant even before Boutella got to set, she sat for dozens of makeup and wardrobe tests. There are several phases to Ahmanet’s look, including a mortal period that goes heavy on the bangs and eyeliner, an undead version of Ahmanet where she’s covered in tattoos, and a desiccated, underpowered form where she’s mostly muscle and sinew. So yes, Ahmanet may move with the same sort of stiff purpose you’d associate with other big-screen renditions of the mummy, but Boutella gives that deliberate pace a more regal bearing: “She carries herself as royalty, even more so after she’s been denied.” I want to show her strength and power through her body.” “Finding the physicality with Ahmanet was very important. “I think people can tell you a lot about themselves before they even start talking, just by how they sit or how they walk,” she says. “If you’ve ever been hurt to that extent, it’s hard to come back from.”Ī former dancer, Boutella spends a lot of time pondering her character’s movement.
“The beauty of the original monster movies is that you were able to relate to every single character, or even to treat their monstrosity as an emotional metaphor.” So even though Ahmanet chooses an evil path, Boutella sees those supernatural enhancements more like a protective shell: “It’s about closing yourself off from the people who were supposed to love you,” she says. “I had to empathize with her, and I wanted to humanize her,” says Boutella. Robbed of what she feels is her birthright, Ahmanet pacts with the god Set to kill her family and, once unleashed in the present day, rain down even more destruction. No longer just a mostly mute bogeywoman, this version of the mummy has royal lineage and a dark backstory: Born Princess Ahmanet in ancient Egypt, the character is supposed to inherit an entire kingdom until her father sires a son. “The first script I read was a work in progress, a template just to start off preproduction, and I was afraid to just play a monster who walks around town scaring people.”Īfter Kurtzman sat down with Boutella to talk over the role, it started to expand.
“I remember reading it and I thought, Uh, no, I’m not doing this,” laughs Boutella. When The Mummy director Alex Kurztman first sent Boutella the script for his reboot, she wasn’t convinced. Here’s how she made her mummy come to undead life. “It’s a part of the job, and I’m embracing it,” Boutella told Vulture. She made herself over once again this week for the new big-screen reboot of The Mummy, where the 35-year-old Algerian actress has the title role opposite Tom Cruise. After a big-screen breakthrough in 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, where she popped as a henchwoman with blades for legs, Boutella slathered herself in striking white makeup for last year’s Star Trek Beyond to play the curious alien Jaylah. “We constantly transform ourselves emotionally, so why not do it physically?” asks Sofia Boutella, who has been making a recent habit of blockbuster metamorphoses.
Photo: Universal Pictures/Universal Studios