- - Elle Fanning freaked out “Predator: Badlands” costar with this unique talent: 'Did she just break her arms?'

Lauren HuffNovember 8, 2025 at 12:00 AM

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20th Century Studios

Thia (Elle Fanning) in 'Predator: Badlands'

Double-jointedness can come in handy when you're a movie star.

Just ask Elle Fanning, who got to put this talent to good use in the sci-fi action thriller Predator: Badlands, where she played a synthetic human (synth, for short) named Thia, who happens to be missing the lower half of her body.

"I do have double-jointed elbows, which is kind of shown off in a couple scenes, which I am proud of," she tells Entertainment Weekly, adding, "Dan [Trachtenberg, director] loved that."

And that's not all Fanning can do. "I can also keep my eyes open for a very long time without blinking, and so I would like to say I did that myself," she says. "They did not do that with the computer. There's a scene where I have to look like I'm shut down, like a robot shut down, and I kept my eyes open. That was me."

Sitting next to Fanning during this interview is Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who plays Dek, the film's young Predator. Outcast from his clan, Dek goes on a quest to prove himself with a treacherous first hunt on a remote alien planet, where he finds an unlikely ally in Thia. Schuster-Koloamatangi calls his costar a "hell of a performer," but admits to being freaked out by her more unusual talents.

"When she did her double-jointed thing, I remember looking over, I was sitting down just cooling off, and she was showing Dan, and I was looking like, wait, what the hell just happened?" he says, laughing. "Did she just break her arms? It was very practical."

When Fanning first read the script, she says she had no idea how she was going to spend so much of the film using just her torso, but she credits Trachtenberg, whom she calls "a man with a plan," for figuring it all out. "Most of the time I had very stylish blue stockings on, and I was cut in half and had to learn how to walk on my hands," she explains. "But it was also in a robotic way because she does have a superhuman strength to her that she can walk fast, and she's not a human, so we were trying to figure out that physicality."

Thia also spends a lot of time strapped to Dek's back, which involved wires and a wheelbarrow attached to Schuster-Koloamatangi's hips that Fanning would sit in. But, at the end of the day, Fanning says she put all her faith in her director. "I really put my full trust into him, and to join the ranks of other actors who have played these iconic Weyland-Yutani synths and androids — it was pretty exciting for me. I'm a big fan of that world and that franchise," she says.

Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Thia (Elle Fanning) and Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) in 'Predator: Badlands'

Balancing practical and visual effects was also a challenge when it came to the looks of the characters themselves. Surprisingly, both actors spent about the same amount of time in the hair and makeup chair — typically between an hour and an hour and a half — largely because Dek's face was mostly CGI.

"I was lucky enough, I only had to wear the prosthetic suit, so it came on limb by limb, and then we zipped everything up and covered it with the tunic," Schuster-Koloamatangi says of his day-to-day routine. "I had an open-face cowl, so I thank God I didn't have to sit in the chair for hours getting prosthetic makeup on. They kind of just left it as is to capture the performance. So it was only literally an hour."

The film also required both stars — especially Schuster-Koloamatangi — to speak an entirely new alien language, Yautja, which was created for the movie by linguist Britton Watkins. The costars admit that learning the language was one of the biggest challenges in making the film. "It's so interesting, I've never done anything where I have to pretend I completely understand what he's saying, but he's speaking in an entirely new language that was constructed for this film," Fanning says, before bragging on her costar, "Yautja, it's a true language that he is fluent in now."

Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and Thia (Elle Fanning) in 'Predator: Badlands'

According to Schuster-Koloamatangi, the most challenging aspect of the dialect is the clicking and vibration noises it requires, all of which he produced himself, much to his own surprise. "I thought it was going to be fake as well. I thought I could freestyle all my lines when they told me," he says with a laugh. "But yeah, it was a cool process, and I think it's such a cool detail for fans of the franchise. They've never had a language established within the Yautja culture that people can enjoy and have fun with and learn."

At this, Fanning cuts in to share that some fans have even started to slide into Schuster-Koloamatangi's DMs with some Yautja. "Yeah, it's crazy," he says. "I was like, wait, did you watch the film? How did you even? Did someone leak the film? I got scared [thinking] I leaked the film, and I was like, wait, no way. It's really cool for the fans, I think, that they have this to watch and enjoy, and have a little fun with themselves."

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Predator: Badlands hits theaters Friday.

on Entertainment Weekly

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