Red Sonja Star Matilda Lutz Talks Playing Her Bikini-Clad warrior

In 2017, Matilda Lutz announced herself to the world with a tour-de-force performance in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge. The French action-thriller received festival accolades and critical acclaim, but due to a limited U.S. theatrical run, it became one of those word-of-mouth movies that film buffs proudly recommended to their uninitiated friends. The assumption at the time was that Lutz would go on to become a fixture in the action genre, but the Italian actor had a very different takeaway from her breakout turn.

Instead of doubling down on actioners, Lutz proceeded to operate with a filmmaker-first mentality. After all, Fargeat turned what could’ve been an overly familiar revenge story in another director’s hands into a subversive rape-revenge tale. The French writer-director applied a similar approach to her 2024 body horror film, The Substance, earning herself three Oscar nominations in the process.

“First of all, I love action. But it’s important to me that the roles make sense and that they’re with directors I want to work with. So my choices are more based on directors and the people involved in the project than the genre,” Lutz tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

Now eight years removed from Revenge, Lutz returns to the action genre, albeit of the sword and sorcery variety, in MJ Basset’s Red Sonja. The seasoned filmmaker already has a cult hit in the subgenre, 2009’s Solomon Kane. She’s also a prolific (and under-appreciated) action director on TV, having helmed 15 episodes of Strike Back at a time in the 2010s when the Cinemax action series and its stablemate, Banshee, were giving most action films a genuine run for their money.

Red Sonja and Revenge couldn’t be more dissimilar in terms of tone and genre, but Lutz’s two incredibly dangerous lead characters share some coincidental overlap, as both Sonja and Jen don bikinis in the middle of all their bloodshed. More specifically, they also experience devastating stomach wounds and thematic rebirths while flipping the male gaze on its head. Looking back, Lutz is grateful that Bassett and Fargeat took good care of her amid such vulnerable filming conditions.

“It gets tough when you have to shoot at 5:00 AM in the freezing cold and you’re wearing a chainmail bikini or just a bikini. But I had such amazing directors on both projects,” Lutz says. “MJ and Coralie are such great talents, and they’re just amazing human beings. They were always with me, and they were very protective.”

For Lutz, Red Sonja was the more nerve-racking scenario since she had to wear the two-piece armor in front of hundreds of people. Revenge had a cast of only four primary actors, so her character was alone for prolonged stretches in the desert. As a benevolent barbarian warrior in the mythical land of Hyrkania, Sonja is enslaved and imprisoned by the ecocidal emperor known as Draygan (Robert Sheehan). She’s then forced to fight her fellow prisoners for the entertainment of Draygan, his haunted bride, Annisia (Wallis Day), and a bloodthirsty crowd.

“Just the fact that I was in a bikini, I was very nervous about it at the beginning. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have to fight in the middle of an arena with a crowd of 400 extras and 200 crew members, and it’s not going to be easy.’ I was exposed and I felt exposed,” Lutz admits. “But I had so much to think about, not just the physical part, but also her emotional arc. So I forgot about it, and I became super comfortable.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Lutz also discusses the harrowing day atop her horse during Red Sonja training, as well as her valid reasons for not watching the 1985’s Red Sonja starring Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Well, like everybody else, I was a huge fan of Revenge when it came out in 2017, and I assumed that it would be the first of many action roles for you. Did more action opportunities come your way before Red Sonja? Or did you resist that path for a bit? 

First of all, I love action. I grew up with sports, and I’ll take on anything fun. But it’s important to me that the roles make sense and that they’re with directors I want to work with. So my choices are more based on directors and the people involved in the project than the genre. 

When you first got the Red Sonja script and you came across the theme of rebirth as well as a couple severe stomach wounds, did you have a laugh to yourself over that familiar territory?

(Laughs.) [The stomach wounds] didn’t cross my mind until you said it, actually. I still feel like every project is always a new experience. The character or genre might have some similarities, but there’s a different crew, different cast and just different situations. Another similarity between Red Sonja and Revenge is that I shot both while wearing a bikini in the cold. Bulgaria for Red Sonja and Morocco for Revenge would either become super cold or super hot, so that part was challenging.

This iteration of Red Sonja had been in development for a while, and there were several different creative teams along the way. But once MJ Bassett was hired, the project seemed to find a rhythm. How many hoops did you jump through during casting?

I did a lot of self-tapes for Red Sonja. At the time of the audition, I was shooting a show in Italy, and I couldn’t make it out to L.A. So, every time I did a self -tape, I would have a conversation with the director, MJ, based on what she wanted. She was very specific on direction in scenes, and I ended up doing three or four self-tapes. 

She then called me and said, “I have three or four girls that are in the final, but I’m not going to pick someone unless I see you in person.” But I was shooting every day, and I still couldn’t make it to L.A. And then it just so happened that MJ was going to go location scouting in Bulgaria, so she asked me if I could go to Bulgaria for the weekend and test there. So I went there, but I didn’t think I got the role. I gave my all, and I really cared about the character and the project, but I never thought, “Oh, I got this.”

I tested Saturday morning [in Bulgaria], and on Sunday, I got a FaceTime call from MJ when I was back in Milan [Italy] with my son. But I was so scared to pick up the call. I was just really nervous, and so I didn’t pick up the phone. MJ then texted me and was like, “Hey, before I make my decision, I really need to ask you one last question.” I then got the courage to call her back, and she was like, “Do you want to be the next Red Sonja?” So that’s how I found out, and it was just such a great way to find out. You usually get a call from your agents, not the director, and it was just a very special moment for me.

Did MJ and the Red Sonja team ask you not to watch the 1985 movie? 

Yes, I actually haven’t watched it yet. But I do know that our Red Sonja is such a completely different film and story. It was clear from the start that what MJ had in mind was different from the character in the 1985 film. In general, I don’t like to watch other people’s takes on the same character. I want to make it my own, and I don’t want to mimic something that I’ve seen on screen or on stage. So I worked off of the script to achieve the creative vision that MJ had, and I read different issues of the comics. The character has evolved since the ‘70s, so I, at the end of the day, just wanted to make her my own. I found inspiration, but I ultimately did what I felt was right.

Did you have plenty of time to learn horseback riding, swordfighting, climbing and archery?

We had about a month, which is not a lot of time. I had seven choreographies to learn for just swordfighting, which were about two or three minutes long. MJ didn’t want to do closeups and lots of cutting. She wanted to shoot the whole choreography, and in order to do that on set, you really have to get it down so that you don’t have to think about the moves. So I was really committed to rehearsing in prep so I could get on set and have fun with it. 

I had never done horseback riding and swordfighting. It was all new to me. When I started my first day of training for horseback riding and swordfighting, I thought, “I’m not going to make it.” It was so complicated. I had been on a horse that walked, but I’d never galloped while doing archery at the same time. There was also a lot of training without a saddle or reins that was meant to establish a connection between me and the horse I shot with in the movie. I had to lie down next to the horse, and he had to be able to follow me. They’re big animals, and they’re very sensitive, so you need to be calm so that they feel calm as well. There was a lot of learning about how the horse behaves and taking cues from my horse.

The first days of swordfighting, I just wasn’t used to it. The wrist work was so hard for me, and the sword is heavy. Even the fake sword that I used in prep was about three kilos. So I really struggled, and every day added a new added detail to the choreography. Now, when I watch the behind-the-scenes videos, I’ll think, “Is that me? How did I learn that?” So it’s such a slow process, but then you see real growth little by little. 

Apparently, there was a day when your horse scared you by trying to run out of the stable door. Were you on it at the time? 

Yeah, when we first started, we trained in a stable because it’s a more controlled environment. I was training to shoot arrows while galloping, and I had to start the gallop, leave the reins, shoot the arrow and then grab the reins again to stop the horse.

So, one day, I started galloping, and a girl with another horse opened the stable door to come inside. My horse then saw the door open, and he basically started running toward the door because he wanted to go back to his stable to chill and eat. I had already let go of the reins, and I thought I was going to fall off the horse. I then got the reins back and stopped the horse, but because he wanted to leave the stable, he started moving back and forth to throw me off him. Thank God, I didn’t fall, but I was so scared after that. I was like, “Wow, this could have gone a lot differently.” 

But the stunt team made me feel so safe. They didn’t force me, but they were very confident about the fact that I should stay on the horse and calm down on the horse instead of immediately jumping off. They knew that I would probably be too scared to get back on again, so they literally held the horse and caressed the horse while I stayed on him. So they made me feel super safe to where I was able to do it all over again.

In the first act of Revenge, Coralie Fargeat leaned into the male gaze as a way of mocking it, and your version of Red Sonja’s chainmail bikini is also meant to point out how absurd the male gaze can be. The armorer even admitted that Sonja’s chainmail bikini was simply for the crowd’s enjoyment, not her protection.

They’re very different films, but as you said, Coralie really wanted to push the male gaze and the objectification of Jen in the beginning of the film. You then have two characters by the end. This woman takes revenge and becomes a completely different creature. In Red Sonja, [the male gaze] is used in a different way, meaning she’s never objectified [to that degree]. 

In the comics, Sonja uses the chainmail bikini as a distraction, but we’re using it in a different way. Characters evolve, especially ones that were first written with different intent in the ‘70s. We’re now in 2025, and it’s a good thing to shift perspectives on certain things. It’s still such an iconic costume that it was important to have it, and her enemy Draygan uses it as a form of possession and power. But when Sonja has to wear the bikini, she owns it, and she’s able to defeat soldiers with full armor. So the fact that she’s in a bikini is kind of empowering in a way since she’s still super badass.

Sonja does upgrade the first chainmail bikini for another two-piece suit with more armor, but did you ever truly feel comfortable in her costume?

It was uncomfortable when doing stunts because the armor of the other soldiers was hard and not too comfy to fight against. But just the fact that I was in a bikini, I was very nervous about it at the beginning, especially when I did my first costume fitting. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to fight in the middle of an arena with a crowd of 400 extras and 200 crew members, and it’s not going to be easy.” I was exposed and I felt exposed, but I was so focused on the choreography that I had to craft. I had so much to think about, not just the physical part, but also her emotional arc. So I forgot about it, and I became super comfortable. In fact, we had these big coats because it was cold, and I remember asking for the coat as soon as I was done with the first take. But by the second take, I didn’t need it anymore. So I did feel more comfortable as we went along.

As you touched on moments ago, Revenge must’ve been a very tough shoot out in the Moroccan desert. Thus, when you had a difficult day on Red Sonja, did you always know in the back of your mind that you could handle it because of that previous crucible?

Yeah, but I’m pretty tough in general. (Laughs.) I like anything that challenges me. But I won’t lie, it gets tough at times, especially if you’re shooting long hours and you have a lot of physical and emotional scenes. It gets tough when you have to shoot at 5:00 AM in the freezing cold and you’re wearing a chainmail bikini or just a bikini. But I had such amazing directors on both projects. MJ and Coralie are such great talents, and they’re just amazing human beings. They were always with me, and they were very protective, giving me energy that I needed. On Revenge, I was mostly by myself, but Red Sonja had such a great cast around me. They gave me energy whenever I was lacking it.

I’m quite fond of Magpie, and I’ve had a couple chats with Daisy Ridley about the inspiration for it, as well as how it originally began with your character, Alicia, as the protagonist.

Yeah, I was so excited to be a part of Magpie because I’m a big fan of Daisy. When I heard that her husband [Tom Bateman] wrote this personal project based on her idea, I envisioned what I want to do in the long run. I would love to direct one day, and I’m actually writing something at the moment. So I was so happy to see Daisy working on set and bringing her own project to life. I really loved the script, and it reminded me a bit of Gone Girl. I love thrillers. So everything about the project was really exciting to me.

That movie also comments on the male gaze like the other two movies we’ve discussed today. I realize Daisy’s character shielded your movie star character from a lot of it, but prior to the film’s climactic dinner, could Alicia still sense that Ben (Shazad Latif) was infatuated with her?

There’s a degree of Ben that is delusional, and he’s created his own thoughts about Alicia. Famous movie stars are usually portrayed [on screen] as very reserved. They’ll only have their team around them, and they can be kind of bitchy and not very nice. So I talked about this with [director] Sam Yates and Daisy during prep, but I wanted Alicia to be nice in general. It would then become an element to confuse Ben. 

She was only being nice to him as she was also going through the backlash of an intimate video being released online. There’s one scene where the set’s security guards are watching the video and commenting on it. So she’s alone in a foreign country during a difficult moment, and she sees Ben as a nice guy that she can vent to. She’s also having a great time working with his young daughter Matilda, and she feels like she has to protect her. But Ben is then confused by her personality and her attitude.

It’s a film where you never know what’s true and what’s not. You keep second-guessing and questioning what’s really happening. So I wanted to give her [and the audience by extension] that extra amount of second-guessing. Is she nice because she’s involved with Ben or wants to be involved with Ben? Or is she nice because that’s the way she is and he’s misinterpreting her attitude?

To close on Sonja, what summed up the character for me is when she referred to the crass armorer by his first name, which was a first for him. She gave everyone and everything a chance, even if they didn’t deserve it.

Yeah, that’s what I love about this film and Red Sonja in general. I knew there was going to be a lot of entertaining action, but I really loved the fact that she has such an emotional character arc. She really cares about people, and even though she has lost everything — her family, her friends and her home — she’s still thinking about helping other people. I love that she’s always concerned about the well-being of the people and animals around her.

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Red Sonja opens in movie theaters on Aug. 13.