Adeline Rudolph Presley Ann/Getty Images Logo text [This story contains spoilers for Mortal Kombat II.]
When asked about joining Mortal Kombat II as the co-protagonist, Adeline Rudolph modestly deflects the question to praise her ensemble. That instinct to put the project above herself is a tell-tale sign of a true lead actor.
Following director Simon McQuoid’s 2021 reboot, the shift in protagonist stemmed from screenwriter Jeremy Slater’s desire to align with Mortal Kombat gameplay, in which players select a different warrior for each go-round. That decision resulted in parallel arcs between Kitana and Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). The former’s story is about reclaiming her home realm of Edenia from Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), the Outworld tyrant who killed her father decades earlier and transformed her mother, Sindel, into his undead consort. (Resurrected Mortal Kombat characters are referred to as Revenants.)
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Born in Hong Kong, Rudolph is of Korean and German descent. By way of her multicultural, academic childhood, she’s fluent in Korean, German and English. There’s also video evidence of her speaking a healthy amount of French. But the two languages that were foreign to her prior to Mortal Kombat II were gaming and martial arts. Thus, she enrolled in a crash course to learn the Mortal Kombat game lore and the necessary fighting styles to play her warrior princess.
In the end, Kitana triumphs over Shao Kahn (Ford) to become Queen of Edenia.
“There were a hundred people around me on set, and to zone in, I would stare Martyn [Ford] down a couple minutes before they called action. I’d then let out a guttural scream to really get into it,” Rudolph tells The Hollywood Reporter. “What you saw on screen was how I was really feeling. It just felt really heartbreaking and frustrating.”
As for Mortal Kombat III, a second draft is nearing completion even though the film has yet to be officially green-lit. It’s assumed that it will follow through on the coda’s promise to have the surviving tournament champions rescue and revive their fallen friends, such as Liu Kiang (Ludi Lin), from the Netherrealm. But if Rudolph had a say in the proceeding, she would like to see Mileena return to the fold as Kitana’s sister-clone from the games. After the character was eliminated by Sonya (Jessica McNamee) in the 2021 film, fans assumed that the creative team would revive her for the Kitana-starring sequel. However, there’s no mention of her, which has now prompted fans to wonder if they completely abandoned her video game backstory so that Jade could serve as the only sororal relationship in Kitana’s life.
But Rudolph doesn’t believe that anything has been ruled out on the Mileena front.
“I definitely think there is a lot of room left for Mileena to have her own [sisterly] storyline with Kitana. I wouldn’t necessarily close that door,” Rudolph says. “Jade is her own [sister-like] character, and no one is replacing anyone in any way, shape or form.”
Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Rudolph also discusses her existing sisterly connection to Jade actor, Tati Gabrielle, as well as her upcoming roles in the Reacher spinoff, Neagley, and the K-pop thriller, Perfect Girl.
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It’s very rare that an actor joins a franchise sequel and becomes either the lead or the co-lead. When did it fully dawn on you that Mortal Kombat II is your movie in a lot of ways?
To be really honest, when I first read the script, it felt like such a beautiful ensemble effort. I did know pretty early on that Kitana’s storyline would hold a lot of the movie’s emotional weight considering that the beginning scene starts off with her losing her father in a very brutal way. So I was aware that I was going to carry that throughout the movie, and as an actor, that’s what I crave. So to dive into that within this super fantastical world was a challenge, but it was one that I was really excited for at the time.
Adeline Rudolph as Kitana in Mortal Kombat II. Warner Bros. Pictures I admire your humility. Given the significance of the role, did you have to jump through a lot of hoops during casting?
Oh my gosh, yeah. My casting process was a little bit longer, to be honest. I had a general meeting with [director] Simon [McQuoid] before taping for the project. I had already read the script and done full deep dive on Kitana’s storyline in the game lore. Then I discussed with Simon how I envisioned bringing her to life with what I knew about her past. I wanted to integrate elements and moments that weren’t necessarily written into the script. After having a general meeting with Simon, I got to tape and re-tape for it.
A couple of weeks later, I had an hour-long director session with Simon. Mind you, I was in Bulgaria, and I had three pixels over Zoom. I thought, I don’t know if I’ve got this job. Nowadays, we’re not in the room together anymore, so it was hard to convey Kitana’s groundedness throughout her struggle. I wasn’t sure if that was going to come through on Zoom, but thankfully it did. I still didn’t hear back for another couple weeks, and I technically got “the call” through Tat [Gabrielle]. She “accidentally” let me know that I booked the job.
As Kitana and Jade, the two of you play weird sisters in a way, and this is not the time you and Tati have played weird sisters. Did casting have any idea about your history together on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina?
To be really honest with you, I think it was an accident. I’m not sure how many of our producers watched Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I’m sure they were aware that we’d worked together, but I’m not sure if they knew the exact capacity [as sisters]. So it was definitely a pleasant surprise that we got to play sisters yet again through a different lens. You also never know. When you see two people work together on a TV show, you don’t know what they’re both going to be like in person. Are they actually friends? Are they just coworkers? So, in that sense, it was awesome for us because we’ve remained friends since Sabrina.
Tati clearly kept tabs on the situation.
She asked her manager at one point who her Kitana was going to be. So it was less that she had a say in who was going to be cast and more that she was just interested in who she was going to work with for the next couple months. Her manager then said, “Do you know someone called Adeline Rudolph?” And she was like, “Are you kidding!?” So she immediately called me, and that was really lovely.
Mileena was killed by Sonya in the last movie, and per game lore, she is Kitana’s clone/sister. But it seems like these movies have ignored that story point, so was Jade meant to fill Mileena’s shoes in a way?
No, I don’t think so. Never say never. Kitana is over 10,000 years old. So much time could have passed between that beginning scene of the movie and when we see her as an adult. So I definitely think there is a lot of room left for Mileena to have her own [sisterly] storyline with Kitana. I wouldn’t necessarily close that door. Jade is her own character, and no one is replacing anyone in any way, shape or form.
So the idea that Mileena is Kitana’s sister-clone is still a possibility in your mind?
In my mind, yes.
Based on what I’ve read about your upbringing, I’d be very surprised if you were a gamer. Did you buy a console during prep just to see what spawned these movies? Or did you rely on a compilation of cutscenes via YouTube?
Unfortunately, I did not buy a console. However, I definitely did exactly what you said. I watched a lot of gameplay over YouTube. I also watched a lot of cutscenes of her specific storyline, and then I did deep dives into Reddit fan theories, as well as anything else that was available to me online. But Ludi [Lin] brought his console and games to Australia, so we all played together then. But, yeah, I did not grow up gaming.
Adeline Rudolph as Kitana in Mortal Kombat II. I know she’s a steel fan-wielding warrior princess with a Shakespearean backstory, but were you able to find any overlap between the two of you that aided your performance?
Our storylines are very different obviously, but I do have a younger sister who I adore. She is my everything, and I’d take a bullet for her. So we both share a strong bond to our sister, and I channeled a lot of that into the foundation of Kitana and Jade’s relationship. What would it be like if we came to a crossroads? What if the end of the universe was looming over a decision we had to make? So I pulled a lot from my closest relationships and what a conflict with them would look like in a high-stakes situation.
Considering she was raised by this beastly figure who killed her father and forced her mother into marriage, she’s remarkably well-adjusted. Do you think that was her trying to hide her long-running revenge plot?
Yeah, for sure. Regardless of how powerful Kitana is, the hiding is her protecting herself. It’s about remembering Shao Kahn as the threat that he is. Throughout filming, I thought a lot about Kitana’s relationship to Shao Kahn. The game lore is a little bit different, but I did take it with me into the movie.
In the games, Kitana doesn’t find out that she is Edenian until a little bit later in her lifetime. So she wasn’t aware that Shao Kahn wasn’t her father, and there was a sense of loyalty towards him. At the end of the day, regardless of what happened, he did take her under his wing and protect her in his own way, if you want to call it that.
Once she gets to the point where she’s basically concealing this revenge plot, it’s partly her protecting herself and making sure that her plan doesn’t go noticed, but it’s also that she’s a little bit conflicted.
I read that you haven’t had much history with fight choreography. Did they throw you in the deep end when it came to Kitana’s first fight with Johnny Cage?
Yeah, it was really interesting because I’d never done stunts to this extent. I was waiting for my green card appointment in Germany when I found out I booked the job. And they were like, “You have to fly to Australia by Friday.” So a lot of that first month was truly just stunt training every single day. It was a mix of us doing the fight choreography, but also working with the stunt department to drill the basics of the specific martial arts that make up Kitana’s fighting style.
In the mornings, I would do tai chi, wushu and kung fu. I just tried to make sure that I had a foundation to build off of and integrate into the fighting sequences, not just do the moves. Kitana’s fighting style is very dance-like and very royal and very fluid. It was all very foreign to me. It wasn’t just punching someone and whatnot. So that fluidity was something that I worked on a lot with Malay Kim, my stunt coordinator.
Did you practically sleep with her steel fans so that they’d become extensions of you?
You couldn’t have said it better. I loved my fans a lot. What was cool was that they felt really natural to me. People keep asking if the fans were the difficult portion of the stunt choreography, but the way that Kitana moves with her fans in the fight choreography itself, they just somehow became extensions of my limbs. I had normal basic fans that I would absolutely take home and practice with, but not my stunt ones from set. Fun fact, there’s a left and a right-handed fan.
When you returned home from shooting this movie, how many of Kitana’s ribbons “accidentally” ended up in your suitcase?
(Laughs.) You know what, I didn’t take home a ribbon, but I did take my fans home.
I figured nobody would notice if a few ribbons went missing, but you went for the pricier prop. I respect the ambition.
(Laughs.) I did ask. I begged. I was like, “Please let me go home with these.” And I got to. I had so many different fans. I had a stunt version, a blunted dummy version and a sharp version that stayed open. So we had all kinds of different fans, but I did get to take a pair home.
The final fight where Kitana slays Shao Kahn to become Queen Kitana is quite rousing. Were you more confident going into this one than you were the first one with Johnny Cage?
In terms of confidence, I was nervous regardless of which fight it was and which stage we were at during filming. Each fight holds its own emotional baggage. I didn’t necessarily feel more comfortable during the Shao Kahn fight, but what I did enjoy was the emotion that she has throughout that fight. It was heartbreaking, but it was also new for me to play around with. The Johnny Cage fight was very down to business [and performative].
The Kitana-Jade sparring scene was a little more lighthearted and playful. It happens during their off-time, and it’s what these characters actually do before they step onto the battlefield. That’s something that gamers aren’t typically able to see.
But the fight with Martyn [Ford] as Shao Kahn was really heavy. There were a hundred people around me on set, and to zone in, I would stare Martyn down a couple minutes before they called action. I’d then let out a guttural scream to really get into it. What you saw on screen was how I was really feeling. Again, it just felt really heartbreaking and frustrating. So it was really fun combining all of those emotions into stunt choreography.
When you saw her triumphant conclusion cut together with finished effects, were you quite pleased with it?
Yeah, it was awesome and crazy. We got to see a version of it when we came back to Australia for reshoots. But then the first time I actually got to see it in its entirety was a week ago in Los Angeles. It was amazing to see it with everyone’s hyped-up reactions. Then I got to watch the movie again in London, and each time I’ve watched it, a different character has stood out to me. I genuinely feel like this was such an incredible ensemble effort. All the emotions really came through, and the fights are just incredible.
The Earthrealm champions assemble at the end of the movie, and they decide to go rescue their dead friends in the Netherealm. When this scene was shot during additional photography, was that your first and only indication of where a potential third film could be going?
To be really honest, I genuinely don’t know [for certain] what is to come. The film alludes to this idea that they are going to bring their lost ones back, so I’d be really excited for that journey. It really opens up a can of worms where anything can happen, and it’s really fun that a death isn’t necessarily a death. We saw Kung Lao come back as a Revenant, as well as Kitana’s mother, Sindel. There’s this element of bringing back their souls that I think is really intriguing. But who knows? I’m open to anything. It wasn’t my first inkling that the [journey to the Netherrealm] might be something we’d do, but going through the gameplay, I knew that it could always be a possibility.
I was a little fuzzy on the present-day relationship between Kitana and her mother. Shao Kahn turned her into a Revenant during the timejump, and then he brought her back to life again after Sonya killed her. Were there ever more scenes that acknowledged their dynamic?
A hundred percent. There’s always going to be scenes that have been cut out. But regardless of how many times her mom gets brought back in this almost Frankenstein’s monster-esque way, Kitana can still only see her mom. So even though it wouldn’t necessarily make a difference if Shao Kahn followed through on that later threat to crush her skull again, she just can’t bear to lose another parent, even if that parent is a shell of who she used to be.
Jeremy Slater is close to finishing a second draft of Mortal Kombat III. I know you’re open to anything, but if you had your druthers, is there anything about Kitana you’d like to explore further?
There’s so much to pull from, but to your point, I do think it would be really interesting to see if we can tie her sisterhood with Mileena back into it. Kitana, Mileena and Jade have such a rich history, and I’d be very open to exploring their complicated relationship. Kitana’s relationship to Liu Kang and Raiden also has a lot to dive into from the game lore. So I don’t know what this draft looks like yet, but I do know that I’m excited for it. I’ll take whatever they bring me.
There’s a scene in a bar where Johnny dismisses a fan of his in heartbreaking fashion. The fan then walks away completely defeated and crushed. Do you ever worry about fan interactions and whether you’re living up to the expectations they create?
Well, firstly, I don’t think I’m big enough to be too scared.
But you’ve done so much genre work that you’ve definitely got fans.
Let’s put it this way. When we had the premieres, I was very mindful of it. I wanted to make sure that I was giving everyone time because they had taken the time to come out and support this movie. Honestly, I downplayed the [Los Angeles fan event] screening to my friends. I was like, “Just walk up in jeans and a t-shirt. They said it’s a screening with no red carpet. It’s going to be fine.” But I didn’t realize how many people were going to be there, and that was a pleasant surprise. So, yeah, I was mindful of making sure that everyone had a good experience. I want that in real life with my friends as well.
When you were starting out, did you expect to do as much genre work as you’ve done? (Mortal Kombat II, Riverdale, Hellboy, Resident Evil, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.)
No, not at all. As actors, what projects we end up in is not always our choice, especially when you’re starting out. We audition a bunch, and in some ways, these projects find us. In my case, it’s been such a privilege to be able to work on so many projects with amazing IP attached to them. It gives me a lot of backstory to dive into when preparing. I’ve played characters who have and haven’t existed in previous iterations. So it’s been a fun ride, but genre work is not something that I expected.
You have an original genre film called Perfect Girl on the way. It’s described as a K-pop thriller, and that description sells itself.
I am so excited about it. The K-pop world is so rich. There’s so much that you can dive into, but what I personally find really fascinating is the trainee system in Korea. Fun fact, when me and my sister were really young, my mom had us audition for fun. I did not get taken, but I think they offered my sister a contract, which my parents didn’t end up accepting. So that world is just so fascinating, and it lends itself to a psychological thriller in the way that Perfect Girl is.
There’s so much inner turmoil that goes on when you’re trying to beat out thousands of people to be a part of that group, and only a handful actually end up debuting per year. It’s a highly competitive industry, and I have only the utmost respect for those girls. Jeon Somi and Nancy [McDonie] were a part of the project, and while Jeon Somi is a solo artist now, they’ve both been in K-pop groups. They’re so incredible and strong, and it was really a privilege to learn from them what it was like to go through the system.
We also have Arden Cho, who’s the voice of Rumi in Kpop Demon Hunters. She produced as well, so she was absolutely pivotal to the project. I shouldn’t say too much more, but I think it’ll be really cool and fun and glitzy and glammy and horrific and sad. I hope people enjoy it when it comes out.
You’ve also got the Reacher spinoff, Neagley, in the pipeline, and it reunited you with everyone’s favorite necromancer, Damon Herriman, from Mortal Kombat II.
How lucky am I? I get to work with all these cool people again and again. When I got the audition, his name had already been attached. Sometimes, we’ll get a script breakdown that spells out your character and lists all the names of the attached cast. So I immediately saw Damon’s name, and I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m definitely going out for this. I would love to work with Damon again.”
Were your newfound fighting skills put to good use?
I would say that my character on Neagly is still working her way to a place where she can really hold her own. She’s so different from the trained warrior princess of Kitana. She’s definitely a very different kind of role compared to what I’ve done before.
*** Mortal Kombat II is now playing in movie theaters.
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