‘Hanna’ star Mireille Enos does her own brutal fight scenes

Mireille Enos took matters into her own hands (and fists) for her brutal fight scenes on “Hanna.”

“I do my own stunts,” says Enos, 44, who portrays Marissa Weigler, the rogue CIA operative allied with Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) in Season 2 of the Amazon drama, just renewed for a third season.

“They have an incredible stunt team, these amazing women I was training with, and they were teaching me the fights and giving me meticulous notes,” she says. “But everything was in my grasp so I was able to do it

“I study martial arts myself and it’s a perpetual training course … keeping those skills honed,” she says. “I do tae kwon do, which is different from the [fight scenes] style of the show … so before we started filming I spent a couple of weeks meeting with [the stunt team] two or three times a week to establish the movements.

“As the scripts arrived, we would address how the fight scenes were choreographed and rehearse them separately to make sure I was up to speed.”

Weigler spends much of the season bruised, bloodied and stitched up as she and Hanna attempt to infiltrate — and destroy — UTRAX, the black-bag CIA operation tasked with turning young women into cold-blooded assassins with specific targets. It’s headed by Weigler’s nominal boss, John Carmichael (Dylan McDermott); when the season begins, he’s unsure where Marissa’s loyalties lie. That’s soon made crystal-clear.

“At the beginning of Season 2 [Marissa] is creating a cover story for herself, to keep herself clean in the eyes of the CIA,” Enos says. “That might have been the end of the story, except that Carmichael shows up with inside information about UTRAX and is trying to pull her back in. I think it becomes clear pretty quickly to Marissa that she just feels the need to protect Hanna if that’s possible.

“Hanna asks her, ‘Why are you helping me?’ and she says, ‘I don’t know.’ And I think that’s true,” she says. “It’s mysterious, even to Marissa, but she’s hit some wall where she cannot be a part of Janna’s destruction.”

In the Season 2 finale (no spoilers!), Marissa makes it clear what’s in store for next season as she and Hanna continue their mission.

“We definitely built an ending that was optimistic,” Enos says. “I’m glad it worked out. We did feel optimistic [about another season] but with the pandemic, everything is up in the air.

“For Amazon to go ahead and renew the show is really a comfort.”

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