[Editors Note: The following contains spoilers for Extraction 2]

Like any good action hero, Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) can’t be kept down for long. With director Sam Hargrave and Joe Russo’s Extraction 2 available on Netflix, by now, you’ve seen the heart-pumping, adrenaline rush of complex action sequences, as well as those shocking losses. On top of bringing Tyler back from the dead, the sequel further develops its characters, allowing the Extraction Universe to expand, and following the New York City premiere, Collider’s Steve Weintraub was able to speak with two of the budding franchise’s stars, Golshifteh Farahani & Adam Bessa.
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We met both Farahani’s Nik and Bessa’s Yaz Khan in the first film, and in Extraction 2, they both return for Rake’s next icy excursion after Idris Elba shows up at Rake’s cabin with a new mission. This time, the mercenary has ties to his charges, the sister of his ex-wife and her two children, who are being held at a Georgian prison, and when things go south, Rake and his team find themselves being pursued by a terrorist, Zurab (Tornike Gogrichiani), out for revenge.

While chatting with Collider, Farahani and Bessa share their intense training regimen, how much prep it takes ahead of shooting for fight scenes, and talk about which action sequence proved the most challenging to pull off. The duo also discloses tricks fans may be surprised to learn and tease where the Extraction Universe may go from here. You can check out all of this and more in the video or transcript below.

COLLIDER: The New York premiere was last night, and I got to attend. Obviously, you guys were there as well. What is it like watching the movie with an audience like that? Because they were so emotionally invested in the film as things were happening. The people around me were freaking out and screaming, and it was pretty intense.

ADAM BESSA: Yeah, they were super expressive! That was lovely to do a film like that and to have an audience engaging with you like that, and feeling it like that, expressing it, I mean, it was great. It felt like live theater.

GOLSHIFTEH FARAHANI: Especially coming from France. You know, people are not so expressive in the cinemas, and last night, for me, it was incredible. I was thinking, “Whoa! What an experience to watch this movie with the audience!” It was really unique for me, I’ll never forget that.

BESSA: Yeah, it’s beautiful to go from laughs to reactions of action, and that emotion in big action scenes, the way they express them.

FARAHANI: Like when he dies, everybody was like [gasps] “No!” It was like the whole cinema was…

BESSA: They were relieved. [Laughs]

FARAHANI: Oh, no!

Image via Netflix

I was going to say, you know that people care about the characters when they have such a strong reaction. So Sam [Hargrave] obviously did a great job because people were so invested in things.

FARAHANI: That was a great fight, I would say, to manage to do an action movie that people would get involved in emotionally because, now, these days, action movies are like TikTok, you do not engage with the characters, you don’t care about them. If they die, you don’t feel anything, you don’t feel anything, it doesn’t touch you.

BESSA: It’s very hard, it’s very hard.

FARAHANI: But Sam wanted it. Sam worked hard for that, and I really give him this credit that he did it.

100%. There are some sequences in the film that I’m like, “I don’t know how Sam did this.” They’re so intense and, obviously, stitching together takes and whatnot, but for both of you, which shot or sequence in the movie was crazy difficult?

BESSA: Most difficult, wow, that’s a good question. Well, to be honest… I remember that day we were driving in the forest, you know the car chase with the motorcycles? We didn’t drive, right? So there was a rally driver, a professional guy, a very, very talented guy, and I remember he was riding very fast—I don’t know, in miles per hour you guys talk, I talk in kilometers—but he was like running fast, very fast between trees, and the trees really narrow. I can tell you, I thought we were gonna die.

FARAHANI: And we almost had an accident; our car had an accident. We fell in the ditch.

BESSA: I remember I said, “How are they gonna film this? The motorcycle is everywhere between pines, and the cars are running so fast, and there are explosions and everything.

FARAHANI: And the guy’s on the boot! He’s looking and driving from back there with all the mud and all the motorcycles and trees.

BESSA: And all the motorcycles and other cars and Sam and Tyler, and I was like, “Wow, how are they gonna film this without an accident?” It could happen! I mean, it’s so complicated, the shot, and it was a long stitch with two, three explosions, two, three set-ups.

FARAHANI: Then Sam, tied to a car with nothing, as if he’s in an attraction park, with nothing, with a camera like this [gestures in front of her], and that car was going in the middle of it!

BESSA: Yeah, crazy!

FARAHANI: I was like, “This guy is dedicating his life to cinema.” And he’s a director, and he was carrying the camera. It was unbelievable.

BESSA: Yeah, he was really involved.

FARAHANI: For me, also, this was the aspect for me on a personal level, it was my fight. I was very worried about it. I think this was a global thing, and then you had the more personal thing, I think, that you would say, like, “Oh, what are we gonna do?”

BESSA: Yeah, we all had a fight to prepare for. A big one.

Image via Netflix

That’s what I actually wanted to follow up on because I think people don’t realize how much training and preparation goes into making a movie like this. So before you stepped on set, how many months or weeks, I don’t know what it was, were you working all the time to learn the dance move of this fight sequence or fight sequences?

FARAHANI: Two months we went there before the shooting. It was the basic of our training, and it was, like, eight, nine hours a day. It was unbelievable.

BESSA: During shooting.

FARAHANI: During the shooting—well, not eight, nine hours, but we had to keep training.

BESSA: Regularly.

FARAHANI: But then you learn the choreography, basically. They would teach you the choreography, which that also takes time. So you’re very worried all the time about your fight, especially him. I think he had to fight with a real fighter, and that was a challenge because it’s hard for real fighters not to go for a punch.

BESSA: Yeah, Megan Anderson was really… she wanted to [gestures fighting]. So I was like, “Slow down!” [Laughs] She comes from MMA, so she was like, “I don’t know if I can hold it.” I’m like, “Well, you’re gonna have to!”

FARAHANI: [Laughs] “Don’t punch me!”

BESSA: No, no, it was a great experience to be there and to, man, to train. First of all, you learned the whole fighting in films and then the choreography, and then everything. But we all had big fights to prepare for, and if it’s for one minute and 35 seconds, a 45-second fight in a film is like weeks and weeks of preparation for that.

I just want to give credit because I could not do any of it. You guys made it look real.

BESSA: I’m sure you could, I’m sure you could!

This body does not… No.

BESSA: With a lot of will, we can do anything.

Image via Netflix

[Laughs] Nope! There’s no chance. I definitely want to do an individual question for you. The movie ends in such a way, with Idris [Elba] setting up what could be something interesting. I know this movie is gonna be a huge hit. Have you asked Sam what goes on after, or are you sort of like, “Whatever happens happens?”

FARAHANI: You mean for the third one? I think they’re already cooking some stuff for the third one. Nobody really talks about it, but it’s actually happening. I think it’s funny, you love these characters so much, and you want to know so much about them that you would love to continue following them. So I guess there will be some stories, and I think there’s a lot more to explore because I think they’re quite mysterious characters, especially my character. There’s so much you don’t know about her, where she’s from, and they don’t have a sexualized relation together, but they’re ready to die for one another. So it’s a very unique character. We haven’t had a female warrior that is not the love interest of someone and not in love with someone, so it’s quite interesting their chemistry, but they have a deep bond together, so I think there’s a lot to explore. Let’s see what they’re cooking.

What do you think an Extraction fan would be surprised to learn about the actual making of an Extraction movie?

FARAHANI: I think maybe the tricks of the oner, the stitches? They would be like, “Where are the stitches? How did they do the stitches?”

You’re saying it’s not all really done in 21 minutes?

FARAHANI: Oh no! I don’t think so. I know. I remember this one shot that we were going in the car, and the camera, they were coming out of this ditch, put the camera on the cable, the cable would take the camera up on the bridge while everything was happening, and I was like, “How is this thing going to work?” And then bringing it down again, putting it on the camera. I think that is the most interesting thing about it, the tricks of the oner. Where are these stitches? That would be interesting.

Extraction 2 is now streaming on Netflix. To find out more about a possible Extraction 3, check out Collider’s interview with Chris Hemsworth and Sam Hargrave below.