Gabrielle Union Fights Back Onscreen, and in Life

Some actors, when confronting a physically grueling role, might spend six months getting ripped at the gym or finessing their mixed martial arts moves.

Gabrielle Union? She did Pilates and drank rosé.

“I didn’t want to do any sort of special training because the character really wasn’t planning on this,” she said of playing Shaun Russell, a mother desperately battling ruthless invaders who have locked her two children inside her deceased father’s maximum-security home in “Breaking In.” “She didn’t have a history as a Navy SEAL or Special Op or jujitsu champion. So when you see Shaun throw a punch, I want it to look primal — like a feral cat just scratching, clawing, using anything at her disposal to save her children.”

“Breaking In,” which opened Friday, is her third collaboration with producer Will Packer (“Girls Trip” and the “Ride Along” movies), who is her partner on BET’s soon-to-wrap two-hour finale of “Being Mary Jane” and the 2016 family comedy “Almost Christmas.”

It also earned her the breakthrough producer of the year award last month at CinemaCon, the theater-owners’ convention. “We took a movie with a very, very low budget, only a couple main household names, and we got a summer release date,” said Union, who recently signed a first-look deal with Sony Pictures Television.

In a phone call from Los Angeles, Union, 45 and married to Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat, talked about getting her second wind in Hollywood, surviving rape and critics of Bill Cosby’s accusers.

Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

A: Oh, I had an amazing stuntwoman who had just come off “Black Panther,” so she did most of the crazy, crazy heavy lifting and the falling off the hill and falling onto the truck stuff.

A: Yeah, being able to play a deliciously complex, imperfect black professional woman whose life is a bit of a mess, who doesn’t always make the right decisions, who’s real. But by the time Mary Jane became a bed-wetter, I’m like, “I think we covered everything, guys.” Then I had hundreds of women saying: “Why is it being canceled? I look forward to her. She’s me; she’s my friend.” And I realized how people saw themselves accurately reflected — and not just the good parts, but an honest portrayal of a woman who’s 40 years old, hasn’t gotten married, doesn’t have a child, and is waffling between careers and what makes her happy.

A: That’s one of my biggest gripes with how the Cosby survivors are being handled, as if this is all some elaborate ruse for a cash grabber or to gain rape fame. Which is why I tweeted the other day that when people listen to me tell my story, they always use words like “brave” and “courageous” and “strong.” My rapist took a plea deal, he got 33 years, he went through the criminal justice system. But I also needed to hold Payless shoe stores accountable by hitting them in their pocketbook. So I wanted to remind people that when you’re making these accusations and characterizing these women that you don’t know, give them the same courtesy, grace, empathy and sympathy that you give more famous rape survivors.

A: Machu Picchu. I’m trying to get there, honey. And a baby, so I’m going to just keep putting that on my vision board until a little angel blesses us. Luckily, I have an A-plus life without a human being that shares my DNA, so if one happens to show up magically, miraculously, and I can add an extra oomph, great. But you’re still going see me kicking butt no matter what.