The late Tina Turner will forever be remembered for her energetic, playful dance routines and deep, powerful vocals that got the crowd roaring. To get Turner's iconic moves down, Angela Bassett was put through some incredibly intense training that involved 10 hours of excruciating cardio with legendary choreographer Michael Peters. Peters has worked on some of the most popular dance routines of stars like Donna Summers and Michael Jackson.
Bassett's cardio training came after getting up at five in the morning and working out at the gym for two hours. "Pain was irrelevant," Bassett told Variety. "Fear was real and physical pain and torture was just going to be a part of it." Thankfully, Tina Turner herself pressed for Bassett to have the option to learn the routines barefoot instead of in five-inch stilettos, as the actress was originally instructed to do.
Once filming began, the days didn't get much easier. The "Wakanda Forever" star remembers her coworker, fellow actor Chi McBride, saying of their workdays, "It's as if we're those cartoon characters and we're laying across the furniture on-set and we all have those black X's across our eyes." She added that everyone on the set felt "absolutely spent" by the end of the day.
