Samoa Joe is one of the select few professional wrestlers who can say they have beaten up an Avenger.
Anthony Mackie recently sat down with Christopher Cruz of Rolling Stone to discuss all things Twisted Metal. When asked what it was like to work with All Elite Wrestling‘s Samoa Joe, who plays the character Sweet Tooth, Mackie admitted he’d been a fan of Joe for a while and compares the way he brought the character to life to what Dave Bautista did with Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.
“I’ve been a fan of Samoa Joe’s for a while now, just for wrestling, and he’s just a nice guy,” Anthony Mackie said. “He’s one of those guys that’s so huge that he just has to be nice, because nobody’s trying to try him. [He’d] break you in half. He doesn’t have any natural predators! So, he’s just a nice guy.
“It’s funny because we have a few toss-ups, a few fight scenes in the show, and I have to say, I was really impressed by him, just specifically in his ability… it was almost like commedia dell’arte watching him work because his face was covered, and it was all body gestures and stuff like that.
“It was really, really impressive, the work he was able to do and the way he brought this character to life. It’s funny to see somebody who – the way that [Dave] Bautista did in Guardians of the Galaxy – once you take somebody’s identity away, all of a sudden, it frees them up to be whoever that character is. And Samoa, he embraced that one hundred percent and made Sweet Tooth, I think, a crowd favorite from this show.”
When asked what it’s like to stare down Sweet Tooth’s mask on set, Mackie admitted he initially had to catch himself because of how jarring it was.
“It was the first day on set. I had to catch myself,” Anthony Mackie admitted. “I walk in, and they’re putting on his wardrobe and his mask. The scene that we were in… [the] Las Vegas scene of him, in Las Vegas after the apocalypse, and just seeing him with that backdrop with that reality was really jarring.
“And, as much as he was acting, I don’t know if he was just beating me up because I’m in The Avengers. I don’t know what it was, but he was pulling no punches, flinging me around like a bag of potatoes. It was fun, though! I can say I got beat up by Samoa Joe and I lived to tell about it.”
There hasn’t been a new Twisted Metal game since 2012. When asked if he would like to star in a future game if this series leads to a new game for the franchise, Mackie said he would love to.
“Of course I would. I mean, the great thing about the show and how it sets up the game is you now have a story, you now have an identification marker of all the characters, so it’s cool because you can play the game now and you know exactly how those characters fit into the game,” he said. “Whereas before it wasn’t so much character-driven, you can really delve into the characters now and play in that world and have specific missions that you have to run as a milkman. It’s kind of like an evolution of the game in a way that I feel gives it a perfect second life.”
Twisted Metal will premiere on Peacock on July 27. The first season of the series will consist of ten 30-minute episodes.
READ MORE: Samoa Joe’s Sweet Tooth Sings ‘The Thong Song’ In New Twisted Metal Clip
What do you make of Anthony Mackie’s comments? Are you looking forward to checking out Samoa Joe in Twisted Metal next month? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
