Arianna Rivas on Fighting Alongside Jason Statham

SPOILER WARNING: This interview contains plot details from “A Working Man,” now playing in theaters.

In David Ayer’s “A Working Man,” Jason Statham plays Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marine living a quiet life as a construction worker in Chicago. When his boss’ teenage daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is abducted by a gang of human traffickers, Levon comes out of retirement to take on her kidnappers.

The film is the latest in a series of actioners from Ayer and Statham chronicling working-class heroes following last year’s “The Beekeeper,” which also saw Statham on a mission to help the helpless. But while the little old ladies Statham saves in that film aren’t much for hand-to-hand combat, “A Working Man’s” would-be damsel in distress takes charge of her fate in the film’s finale, fighting alongside Levon to take down her kidnappers.

“I felt unleashed. I felt powerful, I felt strong, I felt radiant,” Rivas tells Variety about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Statham. “I felt like I was truly, truly stepping into something and I got to portray something that I’ve always dreamed of.”

A fan of classic action films, Rivas says she jumped at the chance to be a part of “A Working Man,” taking Sylvester Stallone’s involvement in the film — he cowrote the screenplay with Ayer — as a good omen.

“I saw the words ‘Sylvester Stallone’ in an email, and I’ve always loved his story about selling the ‘Rocky’ script,” she explains. “Whenever I’m in doubt, I’m like ‘Sylvester Stallone, he did it so I can do it.’ When I saw his name I thought ‘Okay, this is a sign.’ It was absolutely a dream come true.”

Not everyone’s dreams involve spending hours at the gym learning to throw a punch, but stunt coordinator and second unit director Eddie J. Fernandez (who also plays a supporting role in the film) says Rivas was more than up to the task.

“The first thing we did was assess her — see if she’s able to throw kicks and punches. Right off the bat, I knew she was going to be somebody,” Fernandez says. “She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s young, she’s a go-getter. Every time I told her she had to be at the gym at a certain time, she was there early, stretching out, ready to rock and roll, to get thrown and get pushed. She did it all. It was really cool to have her on set and to see her on the big screen.”

If Rivas was intimidated by working with an action star of Statham’s caliber, Fernandez says she didn’t let it show. “Jason’s so cool, but he can be kind of intimidating sometimes, but she’s an actress, she knows how to perform. By the middle of the film, they were hugging and high-fiving each other like ‘Hey, good job!’ It was a good combo.”

As for what Rivas learned from Statham, she says “just watching him throw a punch” was instructive. “How does he throw it and make it look strong without hurting a stunt double or actually hitting somebody? All of those small technical aspects, where does the weight come from? It was very fascinating,” she explains. “I was kind of nerding out watching him go, taking notes wherever I could.”

Rivas spent four months learning choreography for her big stunt sequence in “A Working Man’s” last act, but production challenges forced the crew to rework Jenny’s crucial moment. The sequence Ayer and Fernandez landed on features Rivas with her hands cuffed over her head as she fights with her sadistic captor Artemis (Eve Mauro).

“That was changed about four times. We had more of a fight, but the number of shooting days we had was cut, so David thought on his feet and rewrote that whole ending,” Fernandez explains. “We probably only had about 24 hours to rehearse that and see how the ending came together compared to what was originally written.”

“That was the hardest scene,” Rivas says, adding that she was “just flailing around like a fish. We had long choreography that we did for four months, and then in the moment we said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna change it.’ But it was so much fun when we got it.”

Though it may have been born out of a time crunch, Fernandez says one of his favorite moments comes during the re-configured ending sequence. “[Statham and Rivas] have a little moment — they look at each other and it’s like ‘Not only did you have my back, I got your back.’