Jason Statham and Bai Ling: The Crank 2 Set Photos Behind the Viral “Weirder Sequel” Post

By Nico Grey · Published Nov 3, 2026, 9:48 PM (BKK)

The viral photos of Jason Statham with a woman grinding on his leg come from the set of Crank: High Voltage (2009). She is actress Bai Ling, who played Ria, a wild street girl who glues herself to Statham’s Chev Chelios after he saves her life.

Every set has one actor who’s working and one who’s living. On the Crank 2 set in 2008, Jason Statham was working. Bai Ling was living. Seventeen years later the internet finally noticed, and 3.4 million people needed a minute.

The post that started it went up on Nov. 2, 2026, from @Laineytales on X: two photos, one caption, “Jason Statham realizing the crazy sequel just got even weirder.” By the next night it had passed 3.4 million views and 14,800 likes, and the replies were split three ways: people who knew it was Crank 2, people who swore they had seen her at a Halloween party, and people who just wanted to know what the hell they were looking at.

Here’s what you’re looking at. Bai Ling, in a purple crop top, denim hot pants, candy-striped socks and pink heels, one hand on Statham’s head, one leg wrapped around his. Statham, in his black zip jacket, staring into the middle distance like a man calculating how many takes are left. That’s not a paparazzi ambush. That’s a working day on the Los Angeles set of Crank: High Voltage, shot in spring 2008 with the camera guys in the frame (ComingSoon).

Who is Ria, and why is she climbing Jason Statham?

Ria is Bai Ling’s character in Crank 2, and she’s written about as subtle as a car alarm. In the film she gets blown out of a second-floor window, Chev Chelios saves her life, and from that moment she decides she belongs to him. “From now on, that you saved my life, I am yours,” is how Bai Ling described it to Dark Horizons in 2009. Chev is busy hunting the Chinese gangsters who stole his heart and replaced it with a battery, so he tells her to get lost. She tells him: “You need me like Whitney Houston.”

The script even spells it out. One of Ria’s lines is “You want sticky me?”, followed by the stage direction “starts humping Chev.” If you’re wondering what the set photos look like on screen, that’s your answer.

Bai Ling told Gizmodo she rewrote most of it on the spot. “They ask me to read specifically what they’ve written, because they think it’s funny. I ask, ‘Can I do something else?’ They say sure, so I start to improvise,” she said. “So they let me do whatever I want to do, and say whatever I want to say. ‘Just keep going, Bai Ling!’” She also did her own stunts, including getting hit by a car on wires, and nearly smashed her face on the pavement doing it.

On set, she called Ria “a beautiful, free, giving and loving character… She’s crazy, but she’s innocent” (Rotten Tomatoes). To 8Asians she was blunter: “She’s just a funny, fearless, and bold crazy character.”

The crazy sequel: what Crank: High Voltage actually is

Crank: High Voltage is the 2009 sequel to Crank (2006), written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Statham’s hitman Chev Chelios survives the helicopter fall from the first film, wakes up with an artificial heart, and has to keep jolting himself with electricity to stay alive while he hunts for his real one. It was filmed in 31 days in Los Angeles, from April 28 to June 9, 2008, on cheap consumer HD camcorders, with the directors shooting much of it themselves, Neveldine sometimes on rollerblades (Wikipedia).

Statham knew exactly what he signed up for. “High voltage is an understatement,” he said in 2008. “They locked themselves in a room for three days with five bottles of tequila and wrote the most offensive, outrageous script I’ve ever read.” Then he added: “Poor Amy Smart, that’s my concern. There is a very indulgent sex scene on a race track” (Gizmodo).

Crank: High Voltage official trailer (Lionsgate Movies, YouTube)

The critics didn’t save it. The New York Times called it “boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic.” The Guardian’s film blog asked if it was “the most offensive film in recent memory” (The Guardian). It opened at No. 6 in North America with about $7 million and finished at $34.6 million worldwide, then sold more than 800,000 DVDs and became a cult film.

Who else is in Crank 2: Amy Smart, the racetrack and the catfight

Bai Ling isn’t the only woman making Statham’s day weird. Amy Smart is back as Eve, Chev’s girlfriend, now working as a stripper, and she gets the scene Statham was worried about: public sex on a racetrack in front of a crowd (the scene was shot at Los Alamitos Race Course), to keep his heart charged. Ria and Eve also get into a catfight. “She beats me, too. She’s tough. It’s fun,” Bai Ling told Gizmodo.

The cast also includes Dwight Yoakam, Efren Ramirez, Clifton Collins Jr., David Carradine, Corey Haim and Geri Halliwell, plus cameos from Lauren Holly, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Haze. Statham, for the record, is now married to model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley; here’s what she looks like when she’s not at a premiere.

Bai Ling before and after Crank: the nude scenes

Crank 2 was not Bai Ling’s first time making a set uncomfortable. She was Myca in The Crow (1994), Will Smith’s distraction in Wild Wild West (1999), a topless peep-show dancer in David Mamet’s Edmond (2005), Coco in the Cannes-premiered Shanghai Baby (2007), and a working girl at Helen Mirren’s brothel in Love Ranch (2010). In 2009 she told 8Asians the media put “too much emphasis on the nipple shots.” Fair. Here are the scenes anyway.

In Love Ranch, directed by Taylor Hackford, she plays Samantha, one of the women working at a Nevada brothel run by Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci.

The same year she played Victoria Rualan in the fight movie Circle of Pain (older post).

See every Bai Ling scene on Scandal Planet →

How we got here

• 2006: Crank hits theaters; Chev Chelios falls out of a helicopter at the end.
• April 2008: Variety reports Amy Smart, Bai Ling, Dwight Yoakam, Efren Ramirez and Clifton Collins Jr. join Crank 2 (Wikipedia).
• April 28 to June 9, 2008: Filming in Los Angeles; set photos of Statham and Bai Ling surface (ComingSoon).
• April 17, 2009: Crank: High Voltage opens in North America.
• Nov. 2, 2026: @Laineytales posts two set photos; they pass 3.4 million views in a day (X).

What’s confirmed

Confirmed: the photos are from the Crank: High Voltage set; the woman is Bai Ling as Ria; the film was shot in LA in spring 2008 and released in April 2009. Quoted: Statham and Bai Ling interviews from 2008 and 2009 (Gizmodo, Rotten Tomatoes, Dark Horizons, 8Asians). Not known: who took the photos and why they went viral now. Opinion: everything in Nico’s take.

FAQ

Who is the woman with Jason Statham in the viral photos?

Actress Bai Ling. The photos were taken on the Los Angeles set of Crank: High Voltage (2009), where she played Ria, a wild street girl who attaches herself to Statham’s hitman Chev Chelios after he saves her life.

What movie are the Jason Statham and Bai Ling photos from?

Crank: High Voltage, also called Crank 2, the 2009 sequel to Crank (2006). It was written and directed by Neveldine/Taylor and filmed in Los Angeles between April 28 and June 9, 2008.

Is Crank 2 the weird sequel people mean?

Yes. Statham himself said the directors “locked themselves in a room for three days with five bottles of tequila and wrote the most offensive, outrageous script I’ve ever read.” The New York Times called it “boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic.”

Who plays Ria in Crank: High Voltage?

Bai Ling, born in China in 1966. She told Gizmodo in 2009 that she improvised much of Ria’s dialogue and did her own stunts, including being hit by a car.

Is Amy Smart in Crank 2?

Yes. Amy Smart returns as Eve, Chev’s girlfriend, and has the film’s famous public sex scene on the racetrack. Ria and Eve also have a catfight in the movie.

Has Bai Ling done nude scenes?

Yes, as an adult, in films including The Crow (1994), Edmond (2005), Shanghai Baby (2007), Love Ranch (2010), Circle of Pain (2010) and briefly in Crank: High Voltage (2009).

— Nico. Statham kept his heart in that movie. Bai Ling stole the scene. Hers are all on her page.

Fact-check: Scandal Planet Desk

Original set photos shown via the embedded X post. Stills and clips from Crank: High Voltage (2009), Edmond (2005), Love Ranch (2010) and Circle of Pain (2010). ScandalPlanet watermark only.

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