Meet the women of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Franchise veteran Rebecca Ferguson, who plays Ilsa Faust, says that of the three Mission movies she’s starred in so far, Dead Reckoning Part One has seen her pull off her most impactful action sequences. “What’s the point in doing a Mission movie if you’re not going to do the odd stunt?” she says. “I think one of the reasons why Mission is such a love of my life is the training. It’s not knowing what I’m in for in the next film. I love the fact that you never know what is going to be asked of your character to train. Whether it is a knife fight or a gunfight or martial arts or perhaps a sword fight, which was introduced in this [film] for me.”
Exciting new action scenes? Way to go, Ilsa! According to director Christopher McQuarrie, who joined the franchise in Rogue Nation, at the same time that Ferguson did, he, Cruise, and Ferguson have all steadfastly refused to let the relationship between Ilsa and Ethan slip into the tropes that have often plagued the spy genre in the past. “I was never interested in Ilsa just being a typical love interest for Ethan,” McQuarrie says.
Another familiar face audiences will see in Dead Reckoning Part One is Vanessa Kirby’s morally fluid Alanna Mitsopolis, aka The White Widow, who was introduced in Fallout.
“There are a lot more twists and turns in this one, the stakes are definitely higher,” Kirby says of her character, a powerful and cunning arms dealer, black marketeer, and political intriguer at the center of a dark web of spies, smugglers, and cutthroats. “The White Widow really goes through something in this. She seems impenetrable. It’s a lot more complex and emotionally challenging for everybody.”
Dead Reckoning Part One continues the long-established Mission tradition of adding to its already enviable roster an ensemble of new, dynamic, and formidable characters. A prime example is Hayley Atwell’s Grace.
“She’s an artful dodger, a lone wolf,” Atwell says of Grace, who, when she steals the key to a powerful weapon from Ethan at the start of the film, sets the CIA on her and his tail, lighting the fuse on a globe-trotting chase.
Atwell describes the dynamic between Grace and Ethan as flirty, fun and spontaneous. “Grace and Ethan are two people who shouldn’t be in the same room together but are forced to be because they have a shared common goal. The more she exasperates him, the funnier it becomes.”
Watch Ferguson, Kirby and Atwell kick ass in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, in cinemas July 12.