Jaimie Alexander Reveals Her 7-Hour (!) Blindspot Tattoo Process and Ass

Soon New York’s iconic square is empty, and a bomb squad is surprised to find that the bag contains not a bomb, but a naked woman, covered in tattoos. Jaimie Alexander is appropriately wide-eyed and scared without ever making her character obnoxious.

The bag sits, unattended, in the middle of New York’s Times Square. But then again, this is TV and it makes for a better story, so it continues. What was that like to shoot?

Jaimie Alexander’s favourite fight scene in the Netflix series based on the comic books is when the blind superhero faces off in a hallway against numerous gang members. He added: “The tattoos and everything came after”. There was not a auto in the street, and there was not a person walking around. “Just to look around and see such an iconic space completely vacant was nearly apocalyptic”. We have no visual effects in the shot, at all. I had to contort myself. “They actually marked where my real tattoos were and wove them into the design”. A bit of Googling reveals that a chartered helicopter would likely cover that 700-mile distance in around six hours, perhaps they switched to a private jet at some point. It made everybody laugh, so that was a bonus. That seems to be the default. In case you aren’t keeping score, she can now speak Chinese and kick some major ass. Her muscle memory must have taken over and she wasn’t 100% clear on what she was doing. But you want to be on the ground floor of all those things. When I was a kid I used to mouth “Elephant Shoe” as a saying. And we have so many great military guys that are training us right now. “Jane Doe hand-to-hand combat – brutal, efficient, quick and realistic”. Lady Sif doesn’t do that as much. They did the amnesia of it all really, really well. They have such a good time and they’re such a tight knit family. “I would love to!” Though I would hardly call being slapped in the face by an Amazon holding a broken broom as okay. I was like, “Yeah, I can do it!”

Blindspot has been generating a lot of buzz these past few months as one of NBC’s most promising rookie shows of the season, and with good reason.

“Blindspot” is a series that aims to hook viewers with curiosity. And within the first 10 minutes of the series, we are thrown into detective action mode.

What’s it like to play a character where you don’t really have a backstory or a history?

“I know”, Jane responds. I’m not a formally trained actor. While Alexander’s raven-haired green-eyed mystery woman keeps us enthralled with her every step, Weller eventually turns into a cranky cop type who spews cliches.

“I can’t sit down, so it gets a little rough towards the end of the makeup session”, said the 31-year-old in what we are sure must be a tremendous understatement. And I’m blessed with very fast memorization skills, so I don’t have to read it too far in advance.

Jane has been loaded with drugs that left her mind a blank, but conveniently enough, left her procedural memory alone. Weller straps a bulletproof vest on her and off they go. “We listen to Beatles on Pandora”. He tells her she’s going to be okay and she says, “I don’t know what that feels like”. Sounds like a pretty successful pilot to me. Jane sees a picture of a tattoo behind her ear. It’s instinctual fighting. It’s nothing fancy. That’s not something that she had considered yet. That is the only guideline I’ve given myself for Jane. She has no idea who she is or how she ended up naked inside of a piece of luggage. How hard is that for her? Every episode for us is a Lennie’s daughter is in trouble episode. Overall, Blindspot certainly got my attention, but it needs to slow down and give deeper character study amongst the action. And we are not talking about layering, either. Television is competitive now, and the great stories live on television right now.

Are there any past TV shows you’ve taken lessons from as to how to or how not to pace the mystery? Was this her only move in a bad situation?

ALEXANDER: I don’t know. Off the bat, it is Jane Doe who has no idea who she is, where she came from, or whether or not she likes coffee or tea, but she is the first to find some solid evidence on her body that leads to a case. This is apparently a thing on new procedurals – Fox’s “Minority Report” and “Rosewood” are two other shows, for example, that feature amateurs essentially forcing their way into law enforcement investigations by essentially playing the “Yes to infinity card” in arguments.