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    'Blindspotting' pays homage to 'Romeo Must Die' with an action star and Bay Area music

    by Jen Yamato, Los Angeles Times May 09, 2023 6 minutes
    Janelle gets an unexpected visit from her old flame, Mustafa, on Starz’ s“ Blindspotting.”.

    Action star Joe Taslim, best known for his martial arts prowess in movies like "The Raid: Redemption," "The Night Comes for Us" and "Mortal Kombat," wears a nervous grin as he bounces around backstage at L.A. Center Studios. It's March 2022, and he's flown in from Indonesia to film a guest turn filled with jabs, punches, kicks and surprises for the second season of Starz's "Blindspotting."

    In the most episode last week, he's mostly on the receiving end of those blows as Mustafa, the mystery ex Janelle (Candace Nicholas-Lippman) left behind in Bali after a stint abroad. Taslim has the fight sequences down easy, of course. "But this is the first time I'm doing new things onscreen," he says with a laugh as we wander the soundstages where the interior shots of the West Oakland homes in "Blindspotting" are filmed. "Usually people cast me to play a character who likes to kill people."

    This role is unlike any Taslim has had before, tailor-made to showcase his, in which he sings ballads at his piano. It's why the scene he's about to film, a very unexpected moment in a show full of them, has him uncharacteristically "terrified."

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