Teyana Taylor is living her best action-star life in “One Battle After Another.”
She co-stars in the Paul Thomas Anderson film as Perfidia Beverly Hills, who shares a daughter (Chase Infiniti) with a stoner ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio).
In the trailer alone, Taylor, as Perfidia, is seen shooting a machine gun while pregnant. “Bitch, I felt like Tony Montana,” she told me Monday night at the movie’s premiere in Los Angeles, referring to Al Pacino’s iconic character in “Scarface.” “It was cute, it was real cute. I had a good time because I don’t know if I would do that in real life…Maybe [but] without the belly.”
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She continued, “By the way I did all my own stunts. Well, like 99% of them…You know, I like to feel like Tom Cruise on set. Watch out, Tom Cruise.”
The film also stars Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Sean Penn and Alana Haim.
DiCaprio described his character as a guy “that sits home and smokes pot all the time,” adding that he “took a lot of inspiration” from Jeff Bridges’ performance as The Dude in 1998’s “The Big Lebowski.” DiCaprio explained that the sedated nature of Bob brought a certain layer of ease to the role, especially when it came to performing the film’s many stunts, or “a series of failures,” as he puts it.
“We did a lot of crazy stuff in this movie,” he explained. “But you know, that’s the difference of what Paul does. It’s different than everything else. He wants to see the dude fall.”
DiCaprio insisted he did not go Method for the role by smoking up. “Can’t do it. Can’t perform,” he explained.
The politically-charged film doesn’t bend right or left, del Toro insisted: “There are aspects that maybe talk about the extremes on the left and on the right and they can run amuck…It does have that as one of the things in the movie that causes the plot to charge right through it.”
“One Battle After Another” is in theaters Sept. 26.
