Jamie Foxx was sold on ‘Day Shift’ after hearing he’d fight an old woman

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Day Shift.

As we assume happens anytime an actor is given the opportunity to fight an old lady, Day Shift.

Netflix’s new horror-comedy flick opens with an undercover vampire hunter (Foxx) brawling with an undead granny. If that caught your attention, you’re in the same company as the Academy Award-winning star. When asked by Collider to talk about filming that “fantastic” fight sequence, the actor revealed that, not only was Grandpire played by a contortionist, the mechanics of that scene are what helped him agree to the project.

“Listen. To me, that’s what sold me on the film. When JJ [Perry, director] showed me the previz of that, I said, ‘Yo money, what is that? How is this lady, this old lady doing it?’ And he says, ‘The contortions and this.’ So when we started shooting that, that was the one thing that I couldn’t wait to get into because I wanted to see how I would look in that. And, it turned out amazing. The trailer, I say this all the time, the trailer that we put out, overperformed, and it did 19 million views in less than 24 hours. It’s because when they see that shotgun blast and blow that old granny into the kitchen and people were like, ‘What is that?’ And so, that really piqued everybody’s interest. So, I can’t wait for people to tune in and check that out, because it goes hard.”

Grandpire isn’t the only vampire played by a contortionist. Day Shift is literally crawling with all manner of people who can twist their bodies in painful-looking ways. These stunt performers were employed to make the supernatural action extra affecting, as opposed to using CGI for the difficult shots.

Some camera trickery was in play, however, in the form of shooting the contortionists in reverse: “I didn’t invent contortionists and I didn’t invent reverse photography,” Perry related, “but I married them and I’ll take the credit for that, if there’s any credit to be had.” You can see how Foxx would have had a blast dueling with real-life superhumans, rather than goofily kicking air in front of a greenscreen.

In part because of the Foxx/old lady fight and other contortionist-aided stunts, Day Shift climbed to the top of the streaming charts after its Aug. 12 release, and you can visit Netflix to watch the movie that virtually everyone else is watching.

---