Beckinsale alleges that during the late 2022 and early 2023 shoot in Croatia, the unsafe working conditions left her with severe injuries, including “significant trauma to her left knee,” according to the filing. She alleges that work days regularly ran for 15 hours without necessary equipment or medical personnel to keep the shoot safe. Despite the actor’s protestations, the film chose to “[forgo] safety to maintain profit margins.” Beckinsale says she suffered a “complex meniscus tear in her left knee while filming” and that she was “coerced” into performing more stunts after having already suffered the injury, leading to further aggravation.
Much of the filing focuses on various cut corners during filming. Beckinsale alleges that despite agreements to provide her with “key resources, equipment, and trained personnel” needed to star in an action movie, the production failed to do so. Early in the shoot, the trained stunt woman broke her ankle, and instead of finding another stunt woman, the production purportedly used “an unqualified stuntwoman who was simply the girlfriend of the stunt coordinator” instead.
The suit also includes communications between Beckinsale’s agent Shani Rosenzweig and the production with one text reading: “if you all intend to keep this up, something very bad will happen to any human put in this position day after day both physically and mentally . . . If you truly cared abt the production and not just saving money, you wld care abt the lead actress…” Later, Rosenzweig wrote: “If you’re trying to kill a person, you’re doing a great job.” They alleged that Zois responded, telling them they were correct. Beckinsale is seeking a jury trial for the allegations.
In Puck’s coverage of the suit, Eriq Gardner points out that Beckinsale’s filing is similar to the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal battle, in at least as much as they both concern abuse reportedly enacted on a film set. In late December, Beckinsale posted an Instagram video—inspired by Lively’s suit—detailing the sexist and unsafe conditions she had previously experienced as a working actor. She described “a certain kind of actor who gets a thrill out of legally being able to harm a woman during a fight sequence,” adding, “I was gaslit and made to feel like I was the problem and blamed and left out of cast dinners as soon as I mentioned there was a problem.” To be totally clear, there was nothing in this video to indicate she was talking about this specific lawsuit, but she had already filed the anonymous complaint when she posted it.
