Condé Nast Traveler joins Ana de Armas and ‘Ballerina’ director Len Wiseman to test their movie location knowledge. From the action-packed streets of James Bond to the ancient villages of Underworld, can they remember where their most iconic movies were filmed?
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00:00Oh! Oh! Oh, I know what it is. Oh, that's tricky. That's so... You guys are so bad.
00:07Hey, I'm Ana de Armas.
00:08I'm Len Wiseman.
00:10And we're about to see who knows their film's locations better.
00:13Let's find out.
00:19I see the most beautiful place in the world.
00:22A really fun, beautiful colonial city with a Cuban flag.
00:28And Daniel Crick from the back.
00:32So this is from No Time to Die.
00:34As unbelievable as it can be, that was a set.
00:40They built Santiago de Cuba's street in Pinewood Studios.
00:44So this is the scene where James Bond meets Paloma for the first time.
00:48It was mind-blowing.
00:50When I walked into that set, I was like, I cannot believe we're not in Cuba right now.
00:55I wish we had been.
00:56It would have been really cool to be in Cuba with my people.
01:00The only thing is that it was winter in London, February.
01:08And if you can remember, Paloma's wardrobe was not...
01:12It was actually made for Cuba, not for London.
01:15But my gosh, we had so much fun.
01:18It was so great.
01:20My schedule for James Bond was supposed to be...
01:22I was supposed to shoot with Daniel at the beginning of a filming schedule.
01:25But Daniel got injured.
01:27So he was down for like four months recovering.
01:31So they pushed all my scenes to the end of the shoot so we could do all the action together and not with his stunt double.
01:38So I started shooting Blonde.
01:40And I finished Blonde on a Friday.
01:43I got on the plane on Saturday.
01:45I landed Sunday and I started shooting James Bond on Monday.
01:48I just got there to this massive crew that had been shooting for already six months.
01:56And I was the last one.
01:58We closed the movie with all Paloma's scenes.
02:00The last three weeks of the film was our scenes together.
02:03If you look at Paloma, there is definitely some Marilyn Monroe's affectations in there.
02:07Because I had 24 hours in between.
02:10So part of that bobbliness and part of that, I don't know, that charisma, it definitely came from Marilyn.
02:19And I just added the Cuban side.
02:22So it was a very beautiful combination.
02:25It was also where we said goodbye to Daniel, his last day.
02:29And it was really emotional.
02:30It was a moment that I'll never forget.
02:33And it was, you know, films that he had been doing for 20 years.
02:37It was a huge moment for him and the crew.
02:42This is people that, you know, have done this for a big, big part of their lives.
02:47And to be there with him, saying goodbye to him, it was, yeah, very special.
02:52That's great to be there at that moment.
02:54So we said goodbye to Bond in the streets of Santiago.
02:58It was really cool.
03:00Oh, oh, oh!
03:02What do I see here?
03:02This is a gorgeous town.
03:05One of the most breathtaking towns that I've ever come across.
03:09So this is from Ballerina.
03:12And this is the town, the secret town, where the chancellor kind of quietly goes about his daily life with his assassins.
03:20This is the town of Halstead in Austria.
03:23And it was a town I was obsessed about using in Ballerina.
03:28There was so many times when it just, production-wise, it was not going to happen.
03:35And when I was...
03:35Yeah, I remember there was a time where we thought it was not...
03:37Yeah, that it's just impossible to get to.
03:39It's a five-hour drive.
03:40And just bringing crew and equipment, lighting, all of that.
03:44And we just fought every kind of dynamic to get there.
03:50And we did.
03:51So we only went there for two days.
03:52All of the life, people here are really nice.
03:53But in the movie, oh, you don't want to be here.
03:56Do you remember this moment I was going upstairs, running from one of the bad guys?
04:04And there was this cat, like a street cat, just sitting at the top of the stairs.
04:09Oh, God, yeah, yeah.
04:09And he was just pissed.
04:11He was mad.
04:13And every time I would run, no one would move him.
04:16So the cat would go like...
04:17Every time it would just pass by.
04:20But the first...
04:21But it definitely made me run faster.
04:23The first time...
04:23Oh, I know.
04:24But the first time I...
04:24The first time it happened, you know, what the hell it was?
04:28Ana is running up this, like, long staircase, comes up into the camera, then turns around.
04:33And then I start to follow her.
04:35It was once she turned around where she couldn't see.
04:37This cat, like, tried to take a sweat, but just this vicious, you know, kind of scream.
04:42And so you're running.
04:44Ana's screaming looking back, but still stays because, you know, that's what I...
04:48I gotta say, like, the woman is dedicated.
04:51She keeps running, but now she's just in total fear.
04:53I'm really running for my life.
04:56It's like, what the hell is that?
04:58Yeah.
04:59That was a strange cat, too, though.
05:03Well, I see a white wall with a white door.
05:07Some cactuses or succulents in there.
05:11Trees.
05:12And this is blonde.
05:14This is Marilyn Monroe's actual house in Los Angeles, in Bramwood.
05:18This is the one and only home she ever owned.
05:22And we got to shoot there for about four or five days.
05:26In our movie.
05:27And it was a really, really special, unforgettable experience.
05:33At the beginning, the family living there didn't want us to shoot in the house.
05:37It took us, like, a few months to convince them of many flowers.
05:41It was really moving to be there in that space with her.
05:45And I say with her because I really do believe that she was there with us somehow.
05:51It's funny to talk about these things because people usually laugh at you and they think that you're crazy or being like, you know, there's a woo-woo going on there.
05:58But there was.
05:59And a couple of times, some things happen.
06:02Like, at some point, a mirror fell off the wall.
06:05And not only, not like bad, scary things.
06:07Like, actually, also beautiful things.
06:09And people that were connected to her somehow.
06:12And stories that we heard that we didn't know about.
06:14And things like that.
06:16It was like, it was everything, everything around the movie was kind of, like, coming to us, you know.
06:23It was very strange.
06:25The whole movie, we were lucky enough to find the same, all the places, the real places that she lived in.
06:30Little apartments.
06:31And even the apartment with her mom was that apartment.
06:34Or movie studios.
06:36And every place that we used, she was there.
06:40This was about a month of my life.
06:43I can't forget that.
06:45Oh, that was too easy.
06:46This is from Live Free or Die Hard.
06:48It's a, takes place in Washington, D.C.
06:51But we built this freeway system.
06:54Yeah.
06:54What do you mean?
06:54Not all of it.
06:55But we built a massive section of this, like, freeway roundabout.
07:01I didn't want to do it CG.
07:03So we built a street.
07:04It's the finale of the film.
07:06And Bruce Willis is being targeted by an F-18.
07:10So we built a practical freeway, blew up that freeway.
07:13And it was, it was such a big operation.
07:17And Bruce was just, he was like, how long is the sequence in the movie?
07:22I'm like, this is a good, this is a proper, like, this is like five minutes.
07:25He's like, five minutes.
07:26That's it.
07:27For everything we're doing, five minutes.
07:28I made a Die Hard movie when I was 15 in my backyard, where I was playing John McClane.
07:35Once I told Bruce that, things just kind of changed.
07:39He's like, you did a movie in your backyard playing John McClane, and now you're doing the real one.
07:45That's great.
07:46And it just had this, had this kind of bond, so.
07:49How amazing.
07:50Yeah.
07:58I like the confusion on your face.
08:00I am so genuinely confused.
08:02This is the woods, and there is like, what it looks like a hippo sculpture.
08:06So it's a, oh, oh, oh, I know what it is.
08:14Oh, that, that's tricky.
08:15That's so, you guys are so bad.
08:18Okay.
08:18This is Knives Out.
08:21In the movie, there was this path where Benoit Blanc and the other police officers and I are walking through the property, finding clues.
08:33And there are these weird sculptures along the way.
08:37The mansion was in Massachusetts.
08:38I can't believe I can pronounce that.
08:42And it was, yeah, it was gorgeous.
08:45I have so many memories.
08:47That was a beautiful house, by the way.
08:49It was so cold outside.
08:51It was freezing.
08:53No one wanted to leave the house.
08:55So they used the entire basement as our green room.
08:59And we were just, you know, hanging out there every day, playing games and just laughing and eating.
09:05And Jamie Lee Curtis was cooking and making croutons for everybody.
09:09And it was lovely.
09:10It's one of the best experiences I've ever had in my career.
09:14Daniel Craig surprised me.
09:17The fact that he just didn't want to go away and have some alone time in his trailer.
09:22And he just rather, you know, spend time with us.
09:25That to me says it all.
09:26He is very approachable and very relaxed and very funny.
09:31He was just hanging out.
09:32He just wanted to be one of us, you know, he was one of us.
09:37I see a boat, like a boat taxi, different layers of a city.
09:43This is in Toronto.
09:46A set that we built on stage for Total Recall.
09:49Correct.
09:50What's the name of the place?
09:51Like, what would you call this set?
09:53This was, do you have it?
09:58Do you have it on the other side there?
09:58Of course I do.
10:00The colony.
10:02Yes.
10:03Yes, the colony.
10:04We searched everywhere for the kind of location of futuristic city in Italy, where it's like traveling by boat taxis and all that.
10:15And just to make it, to make it different.
10:17But we couldn't find it.
10:17So we built it.
10:18Colin did his own stunts.
10:21This one shot where he goes out.
10:23We follow him.
10:24And then he leaps and catches onto all these wires is what kind of breaks his fall.
10:28And then he lands onto the boat.
10:31And, you know, it was one of those things like, like you do.
10:33And you go like, you look through the stunt and then you go, I think I want to do this.
10:38I think I want to try it.
10:39Yes.
10:40Yeah.
10:40I always say that.
10:41I want to do everything.
10:43A really interesting part of this film was the hover car sequence.
10:46I wanted it to feel like a real, like gritty car chase.
10:51So we built six of these hover cars that had a smaller kind of chassis underneath.
10:57So the guys would race these cars.
11:00And then Colin and Jessica Biel were in the vehicle.
11:05We just slammed those things.
11:07It was shooting an actual car chase.
11:09You get the real vibrations, all the, just the interaction.
11:13And I'd also had not seen it approach that way.
11:19Okay.
11:19I see like some metal structures, abandoned, rusted pieces of something.
11:27The look on your face is like you're still searching.
11:30No, I know.
11:31This is Blade Runner 2049.
11:33And I think this is a scene where, is this a scene where Ryan crashes in the dumpster or whatever that is?
11:40You know, it was so weird for me to play this hologram because in the scene when, when, when we crash, she starts like flickering and having like this, like going in and out.
11:50And I had to just repeat the same line over and over again.
11:54But at the same time is glitching, but she is having emotions.
12:00Like she's getting worried about herself and him and crashing and the whole thing.
12:04No, it was really, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a heartbreaking scene.
12:07It was a great scene.
12:08Yeah.
12:08It was really interesting to play a character that was a hologram.
12:11For example, the scene with Mackenzie Davis, when we're like, you know, like we're getting together and like different cameras and then putting layers on layers of the camera.
12:20I don't know how to explain it.
12:21It was very tricky.
12:22So we would watch the monitor and there would be like a see-through layer of what, of what we had just done.
12:29And so I could be on the same position as her or vice versa.
12:33She could see me.
12:34Does that make sense what I'm saying?
12:35Yeah.
12:35So they give you that, that reference of it to try to match to it.
12:38So we were actually acting, but with the monitor in front of us, just so we could see where we were anyways, it was very strange.
12:45So it would just like, it would take just longer, um, to get certain things because they had to be like really specific.
12:52What do I see?
12:53This is a village built out in a Whistler in Vancouver.
12:58So this is actually a ski resort.
12:59And we, we built out, um, this, this ancient town.
13:04So this is from Underworld Evolution, which was my second movie.
13:10It was a lot of fun.
13:11It was also really tough.
13:12It was freezing.
13:13Don't know why I go there.
13:14Why do you keep making movies during winter?
13:17I have no idea.
13:18But the, the cameras were freezing up.
13:20Um, and the werewolves in this are, are suits.
13:24They're animatronic.
13:25Um, so the gears would lock up and freeze.
13:28It sounds fun, right?
13:29It's just fun.
13:31I'm most proud of the first one.
13:32First one was close to me in many ways.
13:35It was also the first, it was my first movie and just, I mean, it's first experience too.
13:40I think we did pretty good, both of us.
13:43Yeah, pretty good.
13:43Good memory.
13:44I mean, making movies is hard, but when you kind of go back and reflect, you just talk about really like the good times.
13:50Yeah.
13:51That's, that's nice.
13:52Yeah.