Pittsburgh’s landscape shaped new Netflix film “Sweet Girl.”
Brian Andrew Mendoza is still in awe of how much havoc he got to wreak throughout Pittsburgh while filming “Sweet Girl.” The action-thriller starring Jason Momoa and Isabela Merced drops on Netflix on Friday. It was Mendoza’s first directorial effort, and he got to have a lot of fun shooting large-scale action sequences around the city. We’re talking big swings like closing down a Downtown street to flip an ambulance and choreographing a violent fight while a “T” train traveled from one station to the next.
He even got to spend a week filming at PNC Park early on in the movie’s production for scenes that involved a packed Roberto Clemente Bridge, a helicopter and Momoa climbing to the very top of the Pirates’ stadium as his character, Ray Cooper, tries to evade capture by the authorities.
“It was pretty crazy to see the fact that we had 1,000 extras, 80 cars on the bridge, closing down a baseball stadium,” Mendoza told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It was a big scope. I definitely had a moment where I remember looking at Jason like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ ”
“Sweet Girl” finds Momoa’s character seeking revenge against a pharmaceutical company that delayed the release of an experimental drug that could have helped treat his late wife’s cancer. His mission quickly spirals out of control, which paints a target on his back and that of his teenage daughter, Rachel (Merced).
Mendoza said the original “Sweet Girl” script was set in New York City, but after scouting Pittsburgh and the Big Apple, he realized it had to be both shot and set here.
“There’s story in Pittsburgh,” he said. “You can feel it on the walls, on the buildings, in the streets. I loved the fact that as soon as I scouted Pittsburgh, I knew that was the city to tell this story because our character was a blue-collar character. I love the angles the city has, the Downtown, the outskirts. It’s a really cinematic city.”
Merced was quite familiar with Pittsburgh due to growing up in Cleveland and often driving to the Steel City for auditions. The friendly Pittsburgh-Cleveland rivalry is “a battle for my father and his friends” and not something that affected the 20-year-old’s enjoyment of filming “Sweet Girl” behind enemy lines. In fact, Merced “felt super at home” here, and she broke into a pretty credible Pittsburgh accent to express how much fun she had observing that authentic yinzer dialect.
She was also involved in that PNC Park set piece and recalled sneaking onto the field and “singing some random stuff,” because why not? Merced also got in on the action, which included an especially vicious fight sequence in an exact replica of the fountain in the courtyard of the Allegheny County Courthouse. It was a step up from the more kid-friendly stunts she got to perform while playing the titular role in “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”
“I’m really excited for short people to see it specifically,” said the 5-foot-2-inch Merced. “I’m part of the short community, and we always get underestimated. I’ve auditioned for a lot of action movies, and they always need someone tall and intimidating. My attitude is intimidating, what are you talking about? ... Hopefully this will change the way people see me and what I’m capable of.”
Momoa and Mendoza have known each other for years, but this was the “Sweet Girl” director’s first collaboration with Merced. Mendoza is excited for viewers to see Momoa play “a contemporary character,” as opposed to the warriors and superheroes he tends to play, and he’s especially pumped for audiences to witness the “off the record” chemistry between him and Merced.
It’s tough to discuss “Sweet Girl”
without mentioning one story beat that turns the film’s narrative on its head. Mendoza pulled off one heck of a twist, but it’s also not the crux of what he was trying to accomplish.
“We were meticulous about working toward that moment,” Mendoza said. “There are little nuggets that lead to that. We really wanted it to be characterdriven, not a trick pony. We wanted it to be something that felt necessary and purposeful to the film.”
The high-octane action in “Sweet Girl” is punctuated by a tender father-daughter bond and pointed commentary about the relationship between politics and the pharmaceutical industry. Mendoza hopes his film “drives awareness” of how those two worlds operate.
Merced spent a lot of time thinking about that subject matter and the psychology of Rachel, who she diagnosed as having some pretty intense post-traumatic stress disorder after all the tragedy that marred her young life. While discussing a potential “Sweet Girl” sequel, she said that she hopes Rachel goes to therapy and that Mendoza can more fully explore “the B.S. that goes on in the health care industry.”
“I don’t think health care should ever be politicized,” she said. “That’s terrible and the opposite of what it should be, and yet it is. If you politicize it, it’s able to be monetized. It’s a very tricky situation, but if we address it in the sequel, more people would start caring about it.”
They both hope “Sweet Girl” catches on enough to warrant another installment, and Mendoza said he would come back to Pittsburgh “in a heartbeat” to do another film. His connection to Pittsburgh runs even deeper than just shooting his directorial debut here: His wife gave birth to their son in the Steel City a week before production began.
Most of all, he’s just grateful to the local governments, police units, Port Authority, the Pirates and all the other entities that let him smash stuff around Pittsburgh for the entertainment of millions.
“For us to do all the sequences and all the things we did in Pittsburgh, when you’re making a film, you’re in this bubble as you forge ahead,” Mendoza said. “There’s this mass of people all around making these things happens. ... I just want to say thank you to everyone involved.
“Every crazy idea we had, we came to them and we were able to make all of it happen. There’s not one thing we couldn’t do.”