NYLON Guys - December 2012/January 2013 (HQ)

You’ve gotta be tough if you want to play Mark Wahlberg’s right hand woman. Luckily, 29-year-old Alona Tal had more than enough pluck to nail that role in the upcoming neo-noir thriller Broken City. But the Supernatural and Veronica Mars regular draws her confidence from a place you might not expect: a two-year tour of duty in the Israeli military. “I think that having handled myself in the army environment made me okay with standing up for my principles, generally,” she says, calmly sipping tea in a bustling Vancouver coffee shop. Directed by Allen Hughes, Broken City bears many hallmarks of its full-on-noir predecessors: Wahlberg plays Billy, a gritty cop-turned-private dick hired to investigate the mayor’s wife, while Tal’s character, Katy, is Billy’s assistant. Tal relishes the winking genre references: “I’m his dame in the office. I help him investigate,” she explains. I”m there for whatever he needs, no matter what.” In Israel, Tal spottings appear regularly on Instagram, but with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Russell Crowe rounding out its star-studded cast, Broken City is a big leap. Tal credits Hughes: “He’s what you wish for when you move to Los Angeles as a nobody actress-knowing, someday, someone will take a chance with me. And that’s exactly what he did.” Here, Tal schools us on what it takes to be a modern-day private eye.
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