Amber Rose Revah played DHS agent Dinah Madani in both seasons of Marvel’s on Netflix, and the actress says that role “hugely” helped prepare her for her new role in Peacock’s Last Light. In the new limited thriller series, Revah portrays Mika Bakhash, an ass-kicking operative with connections in the British government who works with Matthew Fox’s Andy Yeats — an ex-pat living in London, and one of the world’s leading petrochemical engineers — trying to understand why the world’s oil supply is under attack. In an interview with Revah, the actress explained that many elements of her role in The Punisher helped to inform her portrayal of Mika.
“Apart from everything else, the physical training, when we were doing Punisher we did a lot of weapons training. We did a lot of stunt training, and different martial arts. Then, we came to Last Light, and it was something that appealed to me about the character from the beginning is that she’s very capable like my character in the Punisher was,” Revah said. “She was very capable mentally, and physically, and I loved that about Mika. The fact that her whole story is with Andy, with Matthew Fox. But, it’s a platonic relationship. They’re both striving for something, and they both have their own bigger picture. But, they’re going alongside together, which I loved.” So, when it came to the action in this, I was kind of like, ‘Hooray.’ I really enjoy it, number one. Then, it also gave me a platform to be able to go, ‘Where can I move to as a next level?’ So we said, ‘Well, she would have elements of BJJ [Brazilian Jiu-jitsu] and elements of Krav Maga and this and blah blah blah.” So, which was a lot of fun to train as well. So, it settled.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
One of the most compelling aspects of Last Light is how much of the story revolves around strong female characters, such as Revah’s Mika and Joanne Froggatt’s Elena Yeats, the wife of Fox’s character. “It was something that was really important for me to show,” Revah says of the series’ woman-centric element. “It’s part of what I look for in the characters in the first place, and I love shows which have that. It’s also, we need to see things from different perspectives. It is important because I think we see, especially seeing, having role models on screen, and we want to see a variety of different backgrounds and in this show, I think we do.”
A big part of why the woman in Last Light comes across so well is due to the “fantastic” direction of Dennie Gordon, who helmed all five episodes of the show. “She’s open. She’s so go, go, go. If there’s something that I can reference Mika with the fact that Mika’s so capable, it’s Dennie Gordon. She was just fantastic,” Revah said of the filmmaker. “She was very open to suggestions. She works in such a collaborative manner. That’s wonderful. Then, she’s also doing five episodes. It’s a big old series and as you can see there’s a lot that goes into it because it changes so quickly from episode to episode.”
Offering some insight into the filming process for Last Light, Revah shared, “We’re not shooting in a studio with the same things. We are literally all over the world. There’s a lot of action. There’s some very cold days in the middle of winter in Europe. There are some very hot days in the desert in Abu Dhabi, and she is there, go, go, go.
The actress later went on to explain, “We went from the end of December in Prague, which I can’t remember the minus temperatures, but I will tell you they were low. Then, a couple of weeks later flew out to Abu Dhabi, filmed in the middle of the desert where you’ve got dunes after dunes, camels riding in the distance, where you start to lose your head because it’s so hot. And, there’s a sand storm that’s been created by Dennie for the effect that it’ll have on screen and you can… But, it makes a show that… When I saw that scene with the sand storm, and you’ve got all the sand in your throat and everywhere, and you see it and you think, ‘God that looks like a real sandstorm, and it feels like real sandstorm,’ and that’s what it’s for. All episodes of Last Light are now streaming on Peacock.
