Why ‘Last Light’ star Amber Rose Revah didn’t need a stunt double to fight like a ’Bond-esque’ super spy

If you’re a longtime Marvel watcher who’s stolen an early peek at Last Light, a familiar face from Marvel’s Netflix days may already have caught your eye. Amber Rose Revah, who teamed with Frank Castle in The Punisher as an ex-DHS agent with an eye for truth, emerges in Peacock’s apocalyptic new event series as a different kind of spy  — the kind that carries a James Bond-worthy SIS pedigree.

Last Light is filled with tons of slow-burn suspense that builds toward high-impact standoffs; moments that punctuate the tense proceedings with a brutal dose of action when they suddenly arrive. As the series’ super-secret MI6 agent, Revah (known to Marvel fans as The Punisher’s Dinah Medani) knew much of that mayhem would ultimately revolve around her character. So when it came time to capture Last Light’s gnarly fight scenes on film, she showed up ready to rumble… and asked the stunt doubles to hang back.

“We have a brilliant stunt team that we worked with, and I knew going into this that there would be a lot of action,” says Revah, whose MI6 agent Mika Bakhash takes on gobs of dessert danger after being detailed to shadow petroleum mastermind Andy Yeats (played by Matthew Fox). “It’s something that Dennie [Last Light EP and director Dennie Gordon] and I had discussed when we were talking about the role, and I had done a lot of physical work in previous shows, so I’d had a whole lot of training before.”

When Fox’s character travels to a petro-producing nation to sleuth out the source of a globe-threatening oil contamination, he’s suspicious of Mika's presence at first. She’s a government-issued fifth wheel; someone who’ll only distract from his critical, time-sensitive mission — or so he thinks. That changes fast, though, when mysterious goons give chase and Mika’s spy skills come into their own.

Revah said she broadened her already robust martial arts repertoire to prepare for the series’ bone-crunching fight scenes, explaining that the role “meant I could learn different disciplines I hadn’t maybe used before onscreen. So we did a bit of Brazilian jiu-jitsu; a bit of Krav Maga, and then created something really interesting.

“It was great, also, because I love to perform the stunts,” Revah told SYFY WIRE. “So we had a backup if I needed it — but otherwise I would do the stunts myself. And I think that makes it, particularly [for] the big fight that there is, all the more authentic.”

Playing an MI6 agent always invites comparisons to a certain Ian Fleming-inspired operative, and sure enough, Revah said the specter of James Bond inevitably informed her idea of how Mika Bakhash’s training would kick in. “…[E]ven from the first episode even when she’s coming in as a representative from the British government, I felt like [Mika] was quite Bond-esque already,” she said. “She’s very capable; she’s very intelligent, and she obviously speaks many languages — so I had a bit of ‘Bond’ going on already with that.”

Last Light throws both Fox and Revah’s characters into an all-business detective story. Stranded thousands of miles from home and stalked by agenda-driven saboteurs, they eventually learn to set aside their early mutual mistrust, forming a brittle, reluctant partnership that relies on instinct rather than get-to-know-you intimacy. It’s the kind of stoic team-up where vital information is communicated in traded glances; in fleeting nods and facial expressions that preserve the silence needed to keep the enemy guessing from the shadows.

“That’s exactly what I feel we wanted to create with those characters in the story,” said Revah. “We worked a lot on that. I think the first iterations of the script were changed quite a bit, based on our work on those characters and their dynamic. So we had a lot of sessions where we discussed stuff, and Matthew’s a very kind of tactile actor — he’ll really get into it; he’ll improvise until things feel right…I love the fact that it’s this platonic relationship, you know? She’s a woman; he’s a man, and they go through this whole journey together — but it’s not about [romance].”

Catch Revah alongside Matthew Fox and Joanne Froggatt at Peacock, where all five episodes of Last Light are now streaming.