ONE FINE DAY

DAY British model turned actress Wallis Day mixes classic beauty with martial arts skills

- JORDAN RIEFE

You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but Wallis Day can take a punch. “I’ve had my teeth knocked out. Yeah, we don’t fuck about in London,” says the blue eyed blonde with cheekbones sharp enough to slice a knuckle. “In a moment like that you almost don’t feel it, cause you have so much adrenaline and you’re in the moment. But it’s only afterward. It can even be the next day where you’re like, ‘I’m so sore!’”

Trained in boxing, mixed martial arts and Muay Thai, this face of an angel can handle a mean right hook. “I got to a point with MMA where I wanted to explore Wushu and Muay Thai and all the different realms of it. All of that really fascinated me. And watching it and moving, I understood how I could use it for film,” she says. “The stunt team says, ‘Oh, she can do that. So let’s make it a bit more complicated.’ And it looks better on camera.”

How else do you expect her to pull off the fight scenes and dangerous stunts required for roles like Annisia, the titular character’s wicked half-sister in the new Red Sonja, due out next year. It won’t be the first time she plays the bad girl. Last year she was the villainous Agent Shin in Infinite, opposite Mark Wahlberg. But most know her as the good girl, Kate Kane on CW’s Batwoman, a role she took over from Ruby Rose in the second season. The show runners told her to forget everything Rose did, do the research and make the part her own.