Keanu Reeves’ The Matrix Co-Star Felt Her Riskiest Stunt Was Keeping an Actor Alive After Directors Became Reckless With Their Vision
The Matrix, a 1999 film starring actor Keanu Reeves and actress Carrie-Anne Moss, is widely recognized as one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. In the 2021 sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, the two actors once again starred together. In the dystopian world of The Matrix, humanity is unaware that it is imprisoned inside a simulation of reality called the Matrix, which was developed by clever machines to divert people’s attention while utilizing their bodies as a source of energy.
The film is an illustration of the science fiction cyberpunk style, and it has been claimed that the action scenes were influenced by Japanese anime and martial arts movies. At the time, wire-fu methods from Hong Kong action movies had a significant impact on the sector. The film received positive reviews and enjoyed great popularity, which has led to four successful sequels. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reflected on their journey together as Neo and Trinity.
Carrie-Anne Moss describes her friendship with Keanu Reeves as ‘soul friendship’
In an interview back in 2021 while promoting The Matrix Resurrections, the actress Carrie-Anne Moss who plays Trinity in the movie shared,
“We’ve been through this experience together as partners. The only way I can describe it is as a soul friendship. Most of my scenes are with Keanu, and it was just a pleasure to sit across from him and do that again. He has a masterful understanding of action. I’ve watched him grow in the last 20 years. I’m in awe of it.”
During an interview with Time Magazine as a part of the celebration of Keanu Reeves being a part of The 100 Most Influential People of 2022, she shared about the first time she met Keanu Reeves;
“I remember the ease I felt the first time I met him. It could have been a stressful first meeting—a screen test, all eyes on us, Neo and Trinity together for the first time. But Keanu was just as he always is: kind, generous, and thoughtful. We’ve played those characters for more than 20 years, includingin last year’s The Matrix: Resurrections, and he’s still the man who checks in on me during an intense training day, just as he did then.”
Carrie-Anne Moss continued that Reeves supported her all those years and still does it today just by the way he listens and the ways he shows up as a friend. The actress admitted that she is fiercely protective of their friendship and she knows that she can count on him as he can count on her.
Carrie-Anne Moss recalls the most dangerous stunt she has done in her career
During the cover story interview, the actress shared that the motorcycle chase at the highway in The Matrix Reloaded is one of the most dangerous stunts she has ever performed in her career, in which she had to rescue a man called The Keymaker from the clutches of Merovingian and also escape their pursuers.
Explaining the sequence, she said, “There was a lot of pressure. I’m not a very experienced motorcycle rider. I did train on a little bike and then a bigger bike and then a bigger bike. A passenger who’s life depended on me being impeccable and perfect because I knew that if I allowed my mind one moment of doubt, that I could hurt another human being.”
Anne-Moss continued that she held that for all days and it was exhausting holding onto that mental absolute knowing that she was going to keep him alive. After the sequence was done, she said it felt like such a feat, and talking about her sequences in The Matrix Resurrections, she added that she wanted to do everything that was being asked of her.
Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss were not the first choices for Neo and Trinity
During the interview, the duo shared that the makers were eyeing getting Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to play those characters. Jada Pinkett Smith, who played Niobe in the movie shared,
“I remember getting the storyboards when they wanted Will to play Neo. I was going, ‘Man, this is really revolutionary. This is like Japanese anime [but in] live-action.’ It had never been done before.”
Will Smith eventually did not take up the role and it went to Keanu Reeves, who aced it perfectly, but Smith said that she was impressed by the concept of the movie so much that when the studio called her to play Niobe, she didn’t need to read anything, she was in.
Source: EW
