Upstaging Jack White is tough -- just ask his former bandmate Meg White. But the woman who plays the sultry cop to his naughty perp in the music video for his new song "Freedom at 21" just about pulls it off.
After her fierce performance, you can't help but ask, "Who is that girl?"
Twenty-three-year-old model Brittany Colombo, that's who.
Colombo, who's half Sicilian and half black, was born in LA and raised in Chicago. She's been modeling on and off since age 17 -- mostly for print, but also in the occasional music video. You can catch her in the videos for Miguel's "Sure Thing" and Timbaland's "Carry Out," among others. But "Freedom at 21" is undoubtedly her highest-profile appearance yet.
The video's shoot took place over five days at the beginning of June -- two in the desert of Lancaster, Calif., and three at a studio in Burbank, Calif.
The desert scenes were rough, Colombo said; they filmed in the bright, hot sun for four or five hours a day. Colombo also didn't know how to ride a motorcycle, so a stunt double played her role for the bulk of the chase scene, but she still had to confront the shots immediately before and after.
"The motorcycle itself is a couple hundred pounds, so just trying to stand it up straight was a hassle," she said.
She also needed to learn how to play a cop, so director Hype Williams brought in several police officers to show her the ropes. They taught her how to put on handcuffs and how to kick someone's feet to bring them down before slamming them against the roof of a car. When it came time to demonstrate her skills on camera, she worried she had learned her lessons a little too well.
"I had to really grasp him and take his hands behind his back and push him down," she said. "He wasn't hurt -- but I always asked him if he was OK, and he said, 'Oh, it's OK, OK, you're doing fine!'"
Colombo said White was just as supportive when it came time to shoot the most salacious parts of the video back in Burbank.
"I was kind of nervous about that, because he's a really big star," she said. "I didn't want it to be portrayed as, 'You're getting all hot and stuff.' I wanted to keep it professional. And he wasn't weird about it at all. He made me feel like it wasn't bad. He made me feel very comfortable."
Later in the shoot, Williams asked her to put on a tank top with deep-cut arm holes, without wearing a bra, so he could pan over her flank (or, to use a term beloved here at The Huffington Post, "sideboob") while she gazed at the camera. But, without White guiding her through it, Colombo felt a little exposed.
"I was nervous! I was hoping that at least it looked hot. I was worried that it wasn't going to look right," she said. "In the car, I thought it was a little much, which is why you can see my arm covering it."
"But when I saw the end result, I really did love the whole video, from start to finish. The sideboob, going down ... I really didn't know what to expect, just because of the editing. But once I saw it, I was blown away with how good it looked."
Colombo says that she's gotten uniformly positive responses from friends and family since the video's release. If you're the type to believe Internet rumors, you might think that one of the closest of those friends would be the rapper Tyga. But Colombo said, in no uncertain terms, that it isn't true.
"I am not dating Tyga. I have never dated Tyga. One of my friends, her name is Jordan, she was dating him, and I only know Jordan. That's the only relation I have with Tyga," she said. "There is no Brittany and Tyga at all. I have nothing against him -- it's just that's not my thing. I want that cleared up."
And what about Jack White -- after getting rather intimate with him on camera, is he her thing?
"He is very charming, and he is a very good-looking guy," she said. "But I just think of him like ... he's really cool."
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