‘The Mother’: Jennifer Lopez ‘Is a Badass’ On and Off-Screen, Director Niki Caro Gushes (Exclusive)

The Mother director Niki Caro wants people to know how much of a “badass” Jennifer Lopez is both on and off-screen. Prior to the Friday, May 12 premiere of the Netflix action film starring Lopez as a retired assassin, Caro opened up to PopCulture.com about working with the superstar singer/actress, teasing that Lopez’s many fans have “never seen her like this” before. 

The Grammy winning-artist is “a global icon for a reason,” added the director, who has made waves herself behind the camera for films including Whale Rider and Mulan. “She is a badass on and off the screen,” Caro told PopCulture of working with Lopez both as the star of the film as well as a producer. “It was amazing. She’s a great collaborative partner. … And she’s a mother. We both have teenage children, so we had really similar instincts for the material, and so it was just a joy, really.”

Striking the right balance of “thrilling action” and heart was important to Caro, “because right at the soul and the spine of this movie, it’s a love letter from a mother to a child.” All of Lopez’s action sequences were built around the idea of staying true to her character’s history as a combat veteran and skilled sniper, which the director said made the film feel “very real and very engaging.”

This meant a lot of training for Lopez and her fellow stars Joseph Fiennes, Omari Hardwick, and Gael García Bernal. “They were really diligent and responsible at training well and none more so, I think [than] Jennifer, obviously,” Caro told PopCulture. “For her, because of her experiences, a lifetime of performance and dance and choreography, that was pretty effortless for her to learn the fight choreography.” She added, “What was amazing [was] you can see in her videos of her training, is how much intensity and focus and passion she brings even to the training, the rehearsal days. … She’s incredible.” The Mother premieres Friday, May 12 on Netflix.