June 26, 2025 • 53 mins
Part Two picks up with Gabriel’s transformation into Robbie Reyes on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., his emotional connection to the Ghost Rider character, and how saying no turned into a life-changing Comic-Con moment. We go deep into his role in Terminator: Dark Fate, intense training with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the surreal moment of fanboying with Bret Hart in Calgary while filming The Last of Us. Gabriel reflects on his craft, his culture, and why striking the balance between vulnerability and strength is key. This is a story of family, fandom, and finding your fire even when the odds say no.
“Dos Amigos” is a comedic and insightful podcast hosted by two friends who’ve journeyed through Hollywood and life together. Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez push through the noise of everyday life and ruminate on a bevy of topics through fun and daring, and occasionally a third amigo joins the mix!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, I want about Dramaddie rodrig I'm very proud to
bring to you part two of our incredible conversation where
our brother Gabriel Luna here.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And must go on.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Part uh kicking things off with how did that process happen?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
How did you even that was? You know what was
wild about that is around that time I had just
so happened to stumble upon a podcast of Robert Patrick
talking about the process of becoming the T one thousand,
and then shortly after I listened to this podcast, I say,
(00:44):
like a week later is when I got the call
that they wanted to bring me in for this and
I went in to see the Ray Mayfield was was
our casting director on that and and so began almost
the exact same mirror process that Jim put Robert through
(01:04):
when he was a T two one thousand. First thing
was the first casting thing, the callback was with Tim.
I remember seeing Mackenzie come out of the room. Kenzie
Davis said, just did her, who eventually was cast as
Grace in the film call back leave there. Next step
was to go meet with Tim at his office and
(01:26):
I and this all happened to Robert. This is exactly
as it happened because then Robert went to go see
Jim Cameron. They met together. Then they had a stunt
assessment with the stunt team, which is what he went
through and what I went through with the Phil Silvera
who was the stunt.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And this ten assessment is pretty much like can.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
You yeah, what do you how do you feel? How
do you move? And everything else, you know. Then they
bring me in, they teach me some coreo of a
certain fight and I have to do the fight with
Freddie Boschiegas, who is our fight coordinator, who is now
the president of Stunts Unlimited, and I love him so much,
He's one of my favorite people. Yeah, and so Robert
of course went through the same thing I went. The
(02:02):
next step was I was waiting and then meet with
the sky DNSK, go meet with David Ellison, who was
the producing the film, and so once again parallel perfectly
with what Robert was experience experiencing at the time, he
went to meet paramount at the time. Yeah, so it's
just all kinds of crazy, kind of interwoven moments. But
(02:23):
then I remember after that being in a little bit
of a holding pattern. I was buying a house at
the time, so that kind of kept my house I'm
in now, kind of kept my mind off the process
because it was just a lot of waiting. But it
felt like it was all going along the framework that
(02:44):
I had heard Robert talk about in this podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So I was like, okay, We're like okay, so where
am I in the progress?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It feels like I'm at the end of it now.
And then they were like, well, Tim calls me and
or the team calls in. They're like, they want to
screen test you. And I was like, okay, man, whatever
they want. Went to Blur Studios. I met with Tim
Miller and he brings me aside and he's like, Gabe,
he'll hold me by the shoulders, like you are my guy.
But Jim wants to meet his screen test chief. And
(03:11):
I was like, yeah, man, whatever Jim wants. And he's like,
because I'm telling you, I told him, you know, he's
the guy. I don't need to do this. But he
told me that he once built a whole This is
Tim talking about Jim Cameron. He said the Jim once
built a whole forest rainforest for a screen test, which
is apparently what he did for Sam Worthington when he
was testing for Avatar just built a whole like, yeah,
(03:34):
full on set of Pandora for him to do his
screen test. So he's like, so Tim, just test the kid,
and so we go in there. There's a one scene
where I'm talking to these two border guards after I
just ripped through you know, twenty thirty border guards, like
basically like border patrol guys. I infiltrate as a border
(03:55):
patrol looking for the target and then just like ripped
through this entire detention facility, which at the time was
was really really timely, you know, considering how people were
being treated and people being detained and held for you know,
interminable amounts of time. And uh So I did that
(04:16):
scene for the screen test, and then I was done,
I'd say about a week later. Once again, about to go,
I get the text from my wife, which is the
grocery list. Once again about to go to Trader Jokes,
but I'm like, well Trade Jo is getting a lot.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, this episode has been brought to you, and so
uh and so once again no one around just get
the call that you know.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Tim called me. The opportunity was was incredible.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
And was the was the role written Latino or were
you just like the best dude.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, I think, uh, I think the idea was. I
don't know where the you know what the I I think,
I think yes, I think. Well, first of all, the
machine is a kind of a has a kind of
like this polyalloy basically a kind of a T one
thousand exoskeleton liquid skin, and then a ENDO skeleton which
(05:21):
makes it more durable, much like the T eight hundred.
So it it's both and it can split and become
essentially the shell which is the T one thousand and
an endo and kind of coordinate and triangulate on the target.
So there was that aspect, so it could be anything.
It could obviously transform into anything. Yeah, but the target
played by Natalia Reyes was from Mexico City, So if
(05:44):
you're going to send a terminator to Mexico City, you
make them look like the local populace. And and so
that was part of it, and just kept that general
look throughout the thing and transformed into a couple of
different people while I was along the way hunting them.
Another instance where everyone was, you know, making their jokes
(06:05):
and oh, it's the tea, and then I was.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Waiting when that was gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, Yeah, and it did without fail. But once again
when it come out, when it comes out, people forget
that aspect of it. Yeah, because if it's performed, you know,
with diligence and care and focus. And you know, because
I trained so hard for that, and I gained twenty
(06:31):
two pounds of muscle. I read the dow JIQUNDO over
and over again, back to back, because my whole thing
was which is of course Bruce Lee's book about efficiency
of movement, no wasted movement and how anything that isn't
fighting should be shed because anything beyond what is fighting
(06:52):
is what he calls organized despair. You know, any kind
of like flourishes or wushu or anything like that. It's like, no,
if it doesn't get the job done towards the end
of neutralizing or eliminating your opponent, then doesn't factor. Right,
if it's not fighting, it isn't fighting.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
And did you read that and subscribe to that, Like,
did you feel that the character embodied that philosophy.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Or well, the character as a machine would would be
the most efficient. Yeah, and would take the shortest line
from ad B towards the target. Every movement, every step,
every strike would be towards the target, even if he
was engaged with another target. So that was kind of
my philosophy there. And then of course I put on
(07:37):
twenty two pounds of muscle training my butt off, knowing
that at one point I was going to be sitting
in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course, and I didn't
want him to look at me and think that he
could squish me like a bug and beny your beauty.
And so I remember the first time I met him.
He came in for hair and make up test. Bill
Corso or makeup artist, the legendary Academy Award winning special
(07:58):
effects makeup artists, Bill corp Show was painting his like
battle damage onto Arnold, doing like a test. And while
he was doing that, Arnold was meeting with Susannah, one
of our makeup artists from Spain, because we shot the
first I think two months in Madrid. Susanna was there
just gushing over the fact that her father was Arnold's
(08:20):
makeup artist on Conan. Oh, and so Arnold had been
there in al Marilla decades ago making Conan, and here
he was now working with the daughter of his makeup
artists in that film. So he's been just employing generations
and Spanish makeup artists and uh and she and I
(08:42):
was just it was such a beautiful story and I
didn't want to, but they brought me in to meet him.
But I was like, no, no, there's there's a there's
a beautiful thing happening there. Just let them. So I
just sat on the other end of the hair makeup trailer.
And finally they had finished their conversation with Susannah Labb
and Bill's like, Arnold, this is here's Gabriel. And he
turns to me and I see like half his face
all ripped up, and I shoul probably turned a camera this
(09:03):
way half his face all ripped and and he goes
and I stood up. He's like, wow, look at you.
You're ripped. Look at this guy. And I just that's it.
That's That's all the encouragement I needed. And then we
went on to become very close. We would train, you know,
(09:26):
three four times a week together at flex gym and
Budapest shout out to Adam Cislasco, who owns the gym,
and it was so cool, man, it's a that that
gym in Budapest is legendary. I mean, everybody's been there
at the Rock. Henry cow Henry was there, he was
shooting the Witcher. He was actually there where we were there,
Will Smith and Jamie Fox and they're all on the
(09:48):
walls there. And of course Arnold now prominently placed. There's
like a T eight hundred statue of him and the thing. Albert,
who was Arnold's kind of who's kind of a patron
of Arnold when he first moved to the States. Albert
used to run bodybuilding competitions in Europe. He's based out
of Germany. And Albert actually donated these old machines, these
(10:13):
old weight machines that are from the sixties. They're all chrome.
They polish them up and now it's basically like a
living museum at Flex Gym and Budapest where you can
train on these machines that Arnold was training on in
the sixties. So you can you can you can use that.
There's pictures of Arnold on the machines from that era.
Albert donated this.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I didn't think that that would be an actual exhibition
for anyone who's like a fit, you know what I mean. Oh,
this is an exhibition that you can also interact with
that iconically was established by someone that iconic was a physique.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I got, like a pilgrimage.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Isn't that cool? It's just a whole idea that they
did that. But now there's on that wall there's a
huge picture of myself and then be huge picture of
me and Arnold together next fifteen eight hundred statueses. And
so he and I just became you know, we're part
of this very small fraternity of people who were determinators.
(11:10):
But beyond that, he's become this father figure to me
and somebody who I, uh, if some cool stuff is
happening in my life where you're kind of an older brother,
and I'd say that he's kind of the father figure.
And like I was at WrestleMania a couple of months ago,
and I was just like, Arnold loves he speak really
(11:31):
good friends with superstar Billy Graham, So Arnold loves wrestling.
So yeah, you know, he only FaceTime my FaceTime. I
was like, check this out. He's like, wow, how many
people are there? Sixty three thousand. He's like, whoa, it's
a lot of people. All right, I love you have fun,
but you know, just whatever, if there's some cool stuff
going on. I just call him and just to hear
him in his excitement.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And that's a genuine man too.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
It's just so I still ever wonders about this whole
process about making movies. Others like, yeah, seems like he's
such bad still passionate about that. And I've seen your
friendship with him kind of played out, and uh, and.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
I've always been like, man like, I don't know what
it'd be.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Like to be like Arnold, Like I'm doing biceps now,
like you know, like like I'm a trying to do
with squad, what would be the most effective school.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I'll tell you. I'll tell you how he does how
he does biceps. He likes the preacher curl. Uh. He
likes curls of all sorts, curls for the girls.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Girls.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But Arnold's thing is slow, slow on the negative, that's right. Bang,
explosive on the on the rep and it's slow on
the negative. Bang, that's how it is. And the way
he just trains dude, it's like a machine. I mean,
everything is form is perfect, everything is perfect. The timing
of it is almost like a metronome, and it's just
it's amazing. Enjoy every rep. Absolutely, he feels it. He
(12:52):
feels every single every single rep. And I remember training
with him in flex and just being kind of in
all of it. There's just four of us and one
of our first training sessions together and I'm doing triceps
on the on the cables and he's there with his
counting off the reps and he's got you know the
German three that we all learned in The Glorious Bastards
(13:12):
that this is the German three. If you do this,
you get killed if you and and it's it's still
to this day as I'm speaking about it just seems
like someone else's life.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But right, but you you have what I lead h
I will say, Man, you've been able to not just
live up to your dream, but now you're in a
(13:44):
position to, you know, continue to tell stories and a
level that you know it's it's again becomes the dream
of the next Caralina. You know who's going to be
the next Girlina is looking at you and be like, ah,
the last of us, right, like that character. And by
the way, you're like so to seem stealer, bro, like
you know what I'm doing? See with him and the
last of us, they were just like he's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
What do we do more of this guy?
Speaker 5 (14:07):
And you and Page are so believable. Yeah, the brother
guys are perfect together.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, we survive your chemistry the way you know,
how what is that? What was that experience? Like, you know,
the Last of Us was such a you know, people
always and before teen years ago, people were really cynical
about like, oh, a video game, a comic book. Yeah,
you know, but it really is like, if you have
the right tools to tell the story from the character perspective, first,
(14:32):
it doesn't matter how extraordinary or how big the world
is around you, because the story it really is about
the individuals living it, not like look at how big
this is, look at the stunt, at the monsters.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So they really got that one masterfully.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Did the Carolyn Stras produce that one? She did? She
did you work to Carolyn? Well, that's just I mean,
that's HBO. Yeah, the lineage of that Sopranos, Game of Thrones,
all the things that she's worked on. Yeah. Mark my
lad who Cartage, who became was a director, became an
ep of Entourage, was won an Emmy for Succession all
(15:10):
the episodes he did there.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Of course, by the way, little connection there too. He
directed the pilot to Minority Report, which was we did
this one season on that show on Fox, and he
came and directed the pilot and he had just been
back from Game of Thrones, Yeah, because he needed directing
some of the biggest episodes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What a beautiful person. Beautiful person, beautiful, incredibly talented guy.
One favorite directors I've ever worked, very kind, can do scale,
can do sci if I could do action, can do this.
But but once again knows that you know, it's really
about that person, that person and them standing in front
of each other and expressing themselves and that that is
(15:49):
so Yeah. So that's another kind of That's the thing
with HBO. You know, this is the this would have been.
This is the third time I've worked. I did the
day player role that I did HBO when I was
in Austin Brandon, I did True Detective and then The
Last of Us. And they always keep it in the family.
You know, I'm sitting there with Jeffrey Wright who was
(16:11):
in Westworld, and Routina who was in True Blood, and
Pedro who's in Game of Thrones, in Bella, Game of
you know, it's just like family, and that's why I
love working with HBO. Yeah the uh Carolyn is Yeah,
it's amazing. So when all that came together, it was
it was a really hot kind of property. That was
that everyone knew of it and was coming up and
(16:33):
everybody speculating who's going to get cast, and and then
when Pedro was cast as Joel, it did kind of
flash in my mind. I was like, I think I
could play that guy's brother. I knew that they're brother character.
And then I didn't think about it again. And then
when I was still on Twitter, I remember seeing, uh,
I mentioned this this kid a lot. I actually met
(16:55):
them at a London comic con one time. There was
a young young girl who just threw the idea out
there and it got a lot of attention on the internet.
They the possibility that I could play it. I was like, oh,
that's kind of cool just seeing somebody in the out
in the yeah, just say it. And then I was
(17:15):
like okay, yeah. Once again, didn't didn't really register beyond that,
and then month and a half, almost two months later,
my team calls says, Craig Mason and Carolyn Strauss want
to meet with you about playing Tommy Miller and the
last of us, and I was like, They were like,
are you familiar with the game? I was like, no,
but I can get familiar. And so I went on
my PlayStation. I got the game and I started playing it,
(17:35):
and I realized that they were from Austin, Texas. Oh,
like the characters themselves are from Austin texts. Yeah yeah,
And I was like, I can do that. I know
what that is, and and sure enough it all worked out.
They wanted me to play Pegris's brother for that. Did
you have to test for that or like? Well, yeah,
(17:57):
So what they did was they called me. Craig and
Carolyn wanted to meet me, even me, and we met
me Carolyn and Neil Druckman, the creator of the game
and one of the directors. I'd say Craig is our
Shue runner, and we just met. We talked for about
I think forty five minutes. Found out that Neil and
I have the same birthday. We're both born on December fifth.
(18:19):
We share a birthday with Little Richard and Walt Disney's
griffritz Lange. That's great. I go to Disneyland quite often
for my birthday because they'll always give me two buttons,
one for Walt and whatever one hundredth and seventy to
whatever birthday it is online, as I get closer and
closer one hundred and seventeen, and and then they said,
(18:40):
you know, we love you. We think it'd be great
for this if you wouldn't mine, maybe put down a
scene for us, And they sent me a scene from
the second game where Tommy is talking to Ellie about
going to Seattle. And I didn't know what that was
about yet because I hadn't played that part of the
game yet. But in between my meeting, or in between
(19:02):
them calling saying I had the meeting, to the time
I took the meeting, I had about three days. So
I played some of the game and realized all these
aspects of it that I had mentioned before from Austin,
that the dynamic between the brothers, everything seemed very kind
of in my wheelhouse. The fact that the character was
was a veteran, and you know, I've played a lot
(19:23):
of characters that have this kind of history and this,
you know, just experience on the gun. So he's a sniper,
which is I did. I had worked with Jack Neviles,
who trains army snipers. He was our military advisor for
Terminator and so already had a lot of this kind
(19:45):
of knowledge and experience, and so I told them all
this in the meeting. They all they were there eating up.
They loved it, and they was like, you know what,
you're kind of perfect. We just wanted you to kind
of throw this scene together. And I'm like sure. So
the next day I sent this scene. My wife was
my reader who is She's she's really funny. She's like,
you know what, I should do a sketch about how
I'm the reader to the stars and how my tapes
(20:06):
book reader to the Stars, so skin about how this
person is the go to reader in the town and uh.
And so we did the scene and sent it in
and they called me. I think within like three or
four hours. Isn't funny?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
How I really think they they know they're going to
give you the part. And it's like this song and
danstud just traditionally they gotta do.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I just it's just it's just, you know, everybody in
the meeting, everybody in the meeting knows. And then I
think it's you know, they just kind of shoot it
up the ladder or wherever.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
It's almost like they said that they did it. We
got to tell you, like, you know, you wonder your
favorite they even watch it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
They're like, I mean the fact that it came in
hours later. I was like, okay, yeah, that's what I've seen.
It saw.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It's like you were obviously the person who the whole time.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And so that was that was that, and I was
I was given all the scripts I think just shortly
before I should doubt and I and I played the
game for the next two months in prep. I just
kind of played the game, started seeing the casting announcements
come through, and everybody was of course got cast, and
(21:12):
everybody was questioning why and then we do the show.
We go out, this is post pandemic, so it was
still this was still it was a kind of a
masked situation. We were coming out of the pandemic doing
a show about a pandemic, wondering if people were going
to be fatigued about this subject matter. Not only was
(21:32):
it not only was it that not that it actually
was more so kind of this entry point for people.
They knew, they had the experience, They had this collective
knowledge of what that living through that is like, and
the fear that anyone around you could be can affect
you you know, and I remember going to Alberta crogery.
Alberta was in quarantine for two weeks FaceTime with Beether,
(21:55):
trying to get our relationship you know, built, and it
was really beautiful, just really easy man. He he. He
grew up in San Antonio for the first like five
years of his life. San Antonio is eighty six miles
down the road from Austin, and so we kind of
worked out some dialect stuff. He heard kind of my
voice and what I was going to do with the
(22:16):
the thing and tried to match some of that, and
we match some physicality and just have these discussions over
over FaceTime. And then the day I got out of quarantine,
I went to get to do my hair makeup test
and my costume fitting, and then my driver she asked me, so,
(22:37):
what do you want to do with your first you know,
what do you want to do? You're you're you're you're
out of quarantine. I was like, take me to the Hearthouse.
And the Hearththouse is the ancestral home of Brett Hart
and his family, his father's Stu heart Restler. Yeah. I
was a huge you know, growing up, I was a
huge and I am still now as I meant Heart Foundation,
(23:00):
so Brett Hart is I. So I went and did
my pilgrimage to the Hearthouse, and I lurked around the
gates and took photos outside, and there's this beautiful plaque
that says Hearthouse and with two Greco Roman wrestlers wrestling.
And then there I could see the basement from the street,
the world famous dungeon where Stu Hart, his father trained
(23:21):
generations of wrestlers, including his entire family, Brett, his brother Owen,
and his brother in law's Davy Boy, and Jim Knightheart,
who his tag team partner. And so I go home.
I come back the next day. Our COVID doctor fella
named Mike was like, what'd you do with your first
day of freedom? And I said, I went to the Hearththouse.
(23:44):
He's like, oh, you're a wrestling fan. I was. I
was like, yeah, I like wrestling. I mean, I love
Brett Hart. I mean I told him the story that
when I was a kid, after my mom got divorced
with my brothers, my brother Timothy's dad, our first outing
together as our new family unit, my mom, myself and
my little brother was to go see WWE at the
Frank Irwin Center in Austin, Texas in nineteen eighty nine
(24:05):
at Saturday Night's main event. We were going there to
see The Ultimate Warrior, and we left eternal Brett Hart
fans because my brother was. He bestowed the pink visor
shades onto my brother, which is his. It was his claim.
Two fames. Yeah, the first.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Please tell me he still has Yeah, he still has them.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Someone and he's like, he's he just held that over
my head for so long as I got. Look at
I got. Every time I tried to hold him, He's like,
you get Hell, those are mine. You can't touch it. Yeah.
And so flash forward to Calgary, Alberta. I'm shooting the
last of us. We're ending the first We're like round
the end of the first episode or something, and then, uh,
(24:52):
the same COVID doctor. Well he had told me earlier.
He's like, you know what, I know Brett Hart's appearance agent.
Maybe you can link you guys up. I was like,
that'd be amazing. Didn't think about it, just go to work.
One of the last days of the first episode. My
assistant comes up. She's like, I got my COVID on
the line. I was like, oh no, I thought I
popped dirty on one of the COVID tests. I was like, oh, shoot,
(25:13):
what's going on? Man, we're ready to hear him tell
me you need to walk off the set and you
needed whatever quarantine you again for two weeks. But it
wasn't that. It was hey, man, how would you like
to meet Brett Hart? And I was like, I would
love to go on. He's like, well, I gave him
your phone number. He's going to call you tomorrow. I
was like, well, wait, wait, hold on, he's going to Yeah.
I was like, wait, wait, I'm working. We're all nights tonight.
(25:36):
I'm not getting off until six am. When is he
in a call? He's like, I don't know, man, He's
just going to call you. And I was like okay.
So I worked all night, wrapped at six, drove the
hour from High River back to Calgary, went to bed,
woke up at like nine one another like situation with
Robert where I was just I didn't sleep very much,
but I knew something. I had to answer the phone,
(25:57):
and I I answer it or he calls me like
nine to twelve, so I'm glad I'm up. He's like
he gave this his Brett here you're a big fan
and my my son Blades a fan of Oars and
like we can meet up and you know, go have
a bite to eat. And I was like, yeah, that'd
be wonderful. I said, what do you want to do.
He's like, well, tomorrow we can go to Red's Diner.
It's kind of close to your house, and and I
(26:19):
was like, sounds good. And then I get off the
phone and my wife's laughing. You're like, you look like
a little kid.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And then the whole thing by the universe right like that,
You're like nine in the morning, you're talking to like
your childhood hero, and then you're making.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Just go get a bite. You're like, what, what's my crazy? Crazy?
Because then the next day I drive over that Red's Diner.
I get us a corner booth and I'm waiting for
him thirty minutes early because he's not gonna wait for me.
But then nine twelve o'clock comes around he's not there.
Well okay, so I go outside and look outside on
the patio. He's not there. He's like, oh shoot, and
then he texts me and he says I'm here. It's like,
(27:00):
where are you? I call him up? Sorry? Where are
you He's home in the patio. I'm looking at the patio
and there's no one there. I was like, okay, one second.
I go up to the hostess. So it's like, is
there another Reds diner? Like, oh yeah, there's one in Kensington. Oh.
I was like, oh God. So I get in the car.
I drive over to Kensington. It's kind of a kind
of a more kind of fancier. I mean, it's fancy
as kind of Calgary gets. And then I'm looking at everything.
(27:23):
Calgary is only fifteen minutes. Okay, So I go over there,
and but I'm looking at I'm just looking at the
patio from outside. I don't see brett Heart there. And
also this kind of part of town doesn't strike me
as the other place I just left felt very much
like a Bredheart spot. It's like old diner, brick, red
brick building, you know. And then I get to this
(27:43):
place and it's kind of new and fancy. I was like,
this doesn't feel right. So I started driving back to
the other place. Maybe I just missed him. But then
I look at my phone. He texts me and I
call him furiously. I'm sure, I'm so sorry. I'm all
my way, I'm I would never keep you waiting. He's like, oh,
it's all right, just take your time. And then I
look on the text thread and he had sent me
the physical address where I needed to go, and I
(28:03):
just had overlooked it. It was another Reds diner in
East Kenol, where he lives. But luck, once again, everything's
twelve to fifteen minutes away. So I drived to East
Calgary and there he is sitting outside, and we'd appreciate this.
As Latinos and people who love wrestling, we will probably
all love Ray Mysterio, and apparently so does Brett Hart.
(28:25):
In fact, Ray is probably his favorite wrestler, I think,
he says. And he's wearing a Ray Mysterio shirt from
a company called Roots of Fight that my buddy Jesse
Katz owns, And I'm looking at Brett Heart there in
his silver shock of hair, sitting right in front of me,
and we proceed to have a five hour conversation. He
(28:46):
tells me every single story straight from the horse's mouth.
He tells me about the Montreal screwdob against Seawan Michaels,
where Vince screwed him out of the belt. He tells
me Wrestmania thirteen with Stonecoat Steve Austin, and he's using
when he described the Montreal screwjob, he's using salt shakers,
sugar packets, pepper thing to show me where everybody was. Like,
(29:08):
so I'm sitting here, Sean's in the corner crime, my
brother and Davy and Jim are sitting here this salt shaker.
This is Vince coming in with Sergeant Slaughter and he's
just like doing the whole basically the floor map of
what happened when he punched this McMahon out, knock him
out with a nupper cut and laid him out on
the floor. So he tells me this whole story. He's like,
Davy boy always stole my towel, so I didn't have
(29:29):
a towel. So I'm naked as a jaybird as I
walk out, and I tell Vince, you better be out
of here by the time I get my clothes on,
and he's like, I only got my pants and one
shoe on. And I got up and I uppercutted him
and I knocked him out. I told me a little story.
And then he tells me the story about Stone goes.
Steve Austin wrestling at thirteen where Stone Colts is bleeding.
It's a very famous, probably the most famous WrestleMania match.
(29:52):
In fact, it's the first match to ever be inducted
into the Wrestlal, the ww Hall of Fame. And this
year's WrestleMania where I was in attendance, and I went
to have dinner with Brett and his wife Stephanie with
my friend Michael, who blew my buddy Michael's mind. So
we're sitting there Cosmopolitan having dinner and he was just
(30:12):
telling me the whole thing about the induction of the
match and everything else. I was telling Michael about how
Brett had told me about that match, and he used
a Sweet and Low that he folds into fourths to
show me the size of the blade, and then how
he taped it with his wrist tape and he left
a tiny little corner of the blade exposed, because traditionally
(30:33):
that's how they would you would get color and cut
yourself and gig, you know, and you usually do it
to yourself, but Stone Cold had never done it before,
so Brett volunteered to do it for him, but with
the stipulation that if the blade comes out, it has
to happen. You can't go back from that point, even
though at the time there was a strict no blood
rule that vincement Man had put in place, and not
(30:53):
only did they do it, they did it right in
front of Vince. He was never none the wiser. Everybody
thought that Stone Cold had that he had really potato
stone Cold and was bleeding, but he had kept the blade.
The tape is all the way around with the tiny
bit of it exposed, and usually you tape it to
your wrist with wrist tape, and Brett told me that
he had stuck it in his gums, So for the
(31:15):
entirety of the match, he had a blade stuck in
his gums. And then of course cut stone Cold takes
him into the ring, puts Stone Cold on the sharp shooter.
Stone Cold refuses to give up, and that was by
design because he had no real submission moves and they
had given him this finish where it had to be
a submission, And so Brett puts him in the sharp
(31:36):
shooter and he's like, the only way this works is
if the people in the three hundreds can see how
much pain you're in, and that's why you have to
get cut and he was right, because it's legendary. The
Stone Cold is bleeding from his face, he's pushing, he's
refusing to give up, and then he just passes out
and they ring the bell. And basically Stone Cold is
(31:56):
forever in Brett Hart's debt and loves him dearly, and
the love go two ways. Brett loves Stone Cold as well.
We all love Stone Cold from Texas because we're all
you know, he's from Victoria and I'm from Austin and
Stone Cold lived in Austin for a long time and
he just at that point made Stone Cold's career. And uh,
Steve has said this many times himself, and so it's
(32:19):
just to have these this this guy who I idolize,
tell me these stories and then have that match inducted
into the Hall of Fame this year at WrestleMania and
be able to sit with Brett his wife that night
after it happens.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Was was was stone Cold resistant at all to any
of sort of like where where Brett thought, yeah, oh
he was.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
He was at some point when the blade came out.
He says that Steve was like, don't do it, don't
do it. Oh, and then Brett was like, it's too
late and then and so they but then you know,
ever since then, it's been uh, it's been louded as
the probably the restaurant in you match. But anyway, after
(32:59):
I met with at that first time when we were
Reds Diner, he gives me a Hitman hat from Roots
of Fight. This podcast is brought to you by Trader
Joe's and Roots of Fight. And he gives me the
hat and he gives me his book and in the
book he signed the book and his signature is there.
(33:20):
And it's so funny because I remember, it's as if
that signature is emblazoned in my mind because when he
gives the shades out, he signs them, he pre signs them.
So I had seen his signature throughout my childhood on
that pair of shades that he had given my brother,
and now I'm looking at it again thirty years later,
(33:40):
thirty five years yeah, thirty something years later in on
the front jacket of his book, and I was like, wow,
that's so crazy. I remember this.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Only difference was now it has four hearts, where previously
it only had three, because each heart is representative one
of his children. And at the time he gave those
to my brother. And when we were at that show,
he only had three kids. Oh and since then he's
had his daughter, Beans, who's obviously an adult now. But
and I just remember seeing that. I took all that
home and I go back to my house and once
(34:08):
again I was like, you look like a goddamn kid.
So I have the hat on, I have the book.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
But it's so hard not to man, because I grew
up with with wrestling, to the Undertaker was my favorite. Yeah,
but as I was I was, as I was growing up,
you know, it was still very much bibuly And then
all of a sudden, I ended up doing that seventy show,
and that seventies show decides to do a wrestling episode
in partnership with WWF.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
That's right, WWF, and they especially in the seventies, well
in the seventies, Yeah, it was the WWWF back then,
so they stand.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The coolest part about it was that they decided, okay, well,
you know, we're going to do this special episode. And
we were the number one comedy so it was like
easy to get these cameos. So they send all their
up and comers, you know, they send the hardy boys,
then they send Can Shamrock.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
And the Rock Up and Comers.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Bro. That was the rocks first acting gig. By the way,
that was his first time him being on like a
TV show, like oh wow, besides like wrestling or whatever.
So he had to do this scene where he was
kind of playing his dad. Yes, yeah, there is this
actually hilarious picture. It's just me dressed dance faz in
between can Shamrock and the Rock and They're both doing
(35:37):
this like they're punping and I'm like pretending scaring.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Such a great epic picture for me, that is.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
But the point is like these guys roll up and
they do like some little stunt stuff and they'll show whatever.
But you know, like we're looking at the hardy boys,
and I'm looking at the kN Shamrock doing the year
where he had just like left the UFC and joined
right right, And to me that was a huge Well
I still am. I'm one of the most massive UFC fans.
And Dana White was a dear friend is still very
(36:06):
much a dear friend of mine. He would put me
in the front road, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
And then I.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Became friends with all those guys right like Rampitch Jackson
a huge like.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
A huge fan like you and I both know Spiders, yes,
and Anderson who's.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
The Michael Jordan of MMA, and and uh so, then
when Ken Shawnrock, who was one of my first heroes off.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Jeez Man back with the old man old logo, you know,
like the original one hundred percent and like he was
the baddest man on the planet.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
You know, he shows up to the set of seventy
show bro my brain just like exploded, like like.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I'm doing and I'm looking at the Rock.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
He's like, you know, he's doing the eyebrow thing, and
like at that time, everyone in the said, He's like
what is he doing with the eyebrow thing?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
It was like because he was.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Like looking out and he's like the most you know,
my son will be the most electrified man.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And you know, like he was doing the whole thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And everyone's like what is was that time? Was he
started off as like a good guy okay.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, and then he did he they he was he
they wouldn't receive him as this good guy that they
were trying to push it that he made his choice
to turn into this kind of turn. That's how he
became the most electrifying man in sports. Entertainment. How about
that's so crazy. That's so crazy because that is it's
it's it's our business is so funny because you know,
(37:26):
we're actors, but we want to be musicians, and the
musicians want to be actors. We all want to be athletes,
and the athletes want to be actors. It's just and
and and just to see how that all intersects. You know,
right now you talk about the UFC, which I absolutely
love as well, and the we're I was just at
UFC three fifteen with some of my Terminal List cast
(37:47):
mates because we were there as guests of Valentina Schifchinko,
which is the Flyway champion of the world, and she
is going to be She's just started acting. She was
in a picture called Bruised with Holly Berry and it
was just a now that she is joining our cast,
and we were there to see her to support her
because we knew we were in this trying to work
out this deal so she can join the cast. So
(38:08):
Valentina is going to be in The Terminalist with us
and we're going to share some scenes together, and so
we got to go see her in her fight and
the whole time it's just like, first of all, Valentina,
please win this fight. She was playing. She was fighting
mine On Fiarro, who was a great kickboxer, big big gal,
big for flyway and uh and number two, please please
(38:31):
don't hit her in the face. And not only did
she just she barely got touched because she was so smart.
I don't know if she even had this in the
back of her mind. I'm sure she didn't, but she
knews that she has. She knows that she has this
acting gig that she has potentially in a couple of months,
and of course it'll be much sweeter. She's still the
flyweight champion of the world, and of course it'll be
(38:54):
much easier if her face is and complete. Bits. You know,
she needs to have just a masterful, masterful performance, she said,
mine On, great, big, long limbs, great kickboxer, kept going
with this head kick, and without fail, every single attempt
(39:14):
Valentina pulls it. She pulls every single one, just whips
out front of her face and then she and then
she would counter every single time min On through this
this roundhouse to her head.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
That was the game plan. I mean, there was a
no knowledge that kick was going to be coming over.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh yeah, so they just crashed some time she pulled it,
not one of them had it, and I was like, wow,
this is incredible, and then she has She won the
fight that night was incredible as well because Josei Ado
I believe he won that fight. And I was just
talking to Anderson at the Ballerina premiere. What did he think?
He thought j W as well. We all thought he
did so. But apparently Aldo took the gloves off, retired
in the ring. Epic night. U uh we uh who else?
(39:57):
What else happened that night?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Yeah, that UFC.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Car JDM won the championship. That was pretty crazy. That
was nice. So yeah, we just had We had an
amazing time. And then we went and had a pizza
party with as one Valentina. Valentina let me hold her belt,
We said there, took photos together, We all had a
pizza because she hadn't had pizza in a few few weeks.
(40:22):
We had a pizza party. After you win defend your
flyweight champions I.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
Just did a movie with Speaking of wrestlers wanting to act,
I just did a movie with Charlotte Flair.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh yeah, Ric Flair's daughter shout out. Shout out to
Ashley Uh.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
It was.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
She was lovely, wonderful and and and such a great actress.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And I was like, this is your first movie.
Speaker 5 (40:44):
She was so prepared and so like, so spot on.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
You know, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, she's a legend number and that she's earned her
own legendary status.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
Yeah. And I'm becoming more you know, I used to
watch wrestling when I was a kid and then sort of.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Fell out out of it.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
But I've I've recently been trying to get familiar with
the times and and and you.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Know, people like her.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
You know, we would walk around with her and she
was like the beatles Man. Yeah, yeah, we're the Dominican
Republican people be like, oh my god. You know.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
And that's the crazy thing about that old stuff, you know,
it's it's we all love it as kids, of course,
but now it's such big business. It's it's uh the
w W E, d UFC or under the same umbrella
of course, ko and it's it's it's it's an entertainment conglomerate, right,
you know. And it's just and yeah, but they they're there.
(41:37):
Athleticism can never be short changed because it is a
extremely physical.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
I think they're the most the most fit, well rounded
athlete in the world. I mean, when people specialize for
a sport, you know, your body morphs into what he
needs to be for that. Mixed martial arts, it's like
everything in your body has to be a weapon and
it has to function and it has to be throwing
faster than the other person.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah, you think about the I mean, it's just a
well rounded thing.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
It is, Yeah, and it's it's something you know, I'm
a big kind of I'm a boxing purist in a
lot of ways. And but the thing about the UFC is,
while some people will become masters of a certain discipline,
you can't. You can never completely lean on that. And
(42:26):
you're and both hemispheres of your body have to be
active and you and they have to be able to respond,
You have to be able to engage. You have to
have them kind of act independently of each other in
a lot of ways, which is which is an important
skill set, spherical kind of way of being. And that's
what Rouce Lee. We talked about Bruce Lee earlier in
(42:46):
the daw Jikundola. That's exactly what he was. He was.
He was probably the world's first mixed martial artists, and
that's what they always claim, you know, that's what the
and right rightfully so, because that was his approach, to
not get tight in to any specific discipline, to not
narrow your your view of the world, because that's what
(43:08):
martial arts was to him. It was a man if.
It was a expression, a manifestation of the world through
your body in a very spherical way. And that's yeah,
to be able to to be ready in every direction,
be able to pivot in any direction. It's it's useful
in every in in all ways in your life, you know,
(43:30):
I think I think it's it's a the mental aspect
of that is applicable to us as actors. The it's
it's it's applicable to to my work, the work that
I have to do on the gun, where I'm working
on terminalists, for instance, to the idea that both you know,
both halves your body are working independently of each other,
(43:50):
but towards the same end. You know, to be able
to corporate that right and flow with these right, So
you're right, I think truly it is the most well rounded.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
And did you do some additional training, did you incorporate somebody?
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, yeah, we've we've done a lot of that we've done.
Of course we had to for Terminal List, right, for Terminalists.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, that's what is that your next thing right now?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Because that's what I'm working on. Then, right, next thing
to come out will be a show that I shot
also in Toronto called Double in Disguise. It's about the
John Wayne Gacy case where I play Detective Rafael Tovar,
who is was the lead investigator on the John Wayne
Gacey case in Chicago at the time. Amazing in the
(44:32):
in the seventies and what's the time, who was a
Texas guy from Crystal City, Texas who moved to Chicago
because they were looking for bilingual people to be police officers,
and then he finds himself as a lead investigator on
this horrific case that should be coming out on Peacock
in the fall.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And then I'm currently in production on the Terminal List,
which should come out sometime next year.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
And that's uh, the Terminal List. Yeah, yeah, my first
he's Nancy, were the bad guys?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, that's true, that's right, is that?
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, it's where the suspects of them big us guys
there were Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
I mean, hey, all the way up to Sect death Man,
a lot of people You're gonna trust anybody. There are
a lot of people involved that conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
M but I love that show. Terminal List. Say, when
I read that you were on it, I was.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Like, Chris, Chris does a great job. He's a great
leader on that show. He's he's he's uh pulled together
an awesome team. Jared Shaw, Max Adams, Raymondoza worked on
the first season is also a ta He of course
co directed Warfare with Alex Garland. I worked with Raymondoza
on True Detective many years ago, our head military advisor.
(45:52):
There was guy named Mark Simos. I think Chick Daniels
also worked on that the fella I mentioned before who
I worked with on Mattador. But as far as like
the seal teams and maneuvers, Mark Simos and Raymondoza they
were on their there, they were on the teams at
the same time, their first platoon they were, they were
uh deployed together. And uh, I love ray I mean,
(46:13):
and I'm so proud of him and what he was
able to accomplish with the Warfare film, which is authenticity
to a t. I mean it's it's uh, it's so
devoid of any kind of morality play. It's it is
completely devoid of any Hollywood bullshit. Every single round is
fired with having with a choice having been made, a
(46:37):
decision being made, the action. There's no super heroics. There's
just people trying to survive and trying to execute a
mission and eventually trying to extract casualties from this from
this scenario. And it's just a beautiful I mean, beautiful
is an interesting word to use, but it's a a
very impactful film, one that I'm still kind of thinking
about as I as I sit here. But Ray is
(47:02):
special and and he and Jared Shaw and Max Adams,
all the people who are our military advisers are amazing.
And they definitely have equipped us with the Rex skill
sets to move and make it look real. And you
know what I noticed too. But Ray was like, man,
I'm sorry. Jared was like, you know when we cast you,
this is another thing. When I took the meeting about
(47:22):
these got to do this job. Uh, you know, they're
asking me a lot of serious questions about conflict, about fighting,
why I feel about fighting. You know, My whole thing
is much with the characters I play much like the
characters I play, which I guess are just me and
all the facets of me. It's it's to be both
lying and lamb, you know, to be powerful towards the
(47:47):
towards the the for the benefit, for the protection of others,
and the strength to be utilized in that way, but
also to have the vulnerability and the softness inside to
care and be compassionate, to find the strike the balance,
you know. And that that's what I told them, you know,
I told them about the times I've been in fist fights,
and you know, but not in any kind of braggadocious way.
Just so this the sheer fact of it. Every single
(48:08):
every single one of those stories involved coming to someone
else's aid. And because you can say what you want
to me and maybe even you might be able to
strike me. Ah. But once that that force and that
Vince has turned to somebody who can't defend themselves, that's
where the line is drunk. And I was making this
clear of them, it turns my philosophy about fighting, and
(48:32):
they uh, And then they got to a point where
at the end of the at the end of the meeting,
they're like, they're like gave you're you're the guys. You're
perfect for this, and not just because of that what
I know about you and and how you because the
story won of the story has told us about me
coming into the aid. My buddy Beck Bennett used to
be on Satday yight Line and we got into a
bar fight and at the White Horse and.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
In Austin, Austin.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, yeah, the that's a long story. I won't tell
her here. The you knows. And then one of the
guys pipes up Max, He's like, you know, we know
you're the right guy, not just because the stories you
just told her, maybe you because you helping your buddy
back Bennett get out of his barfight, but because you
are both lying and lamb in the sense that the
(49:19):
lamb was on display when you did a dance contest
with my daughter in Chicago at a comic Con event
where they came up to your table, when you treated
her with such respect and such love, and I'm so
thankful for that, he told me. And the dance contest, yeah,
she came up, she started dancing. She wanted she wanted
to like have a dance off. And I remembered this
and I was like oh, I do remember that he
(49:40):
had a video. He's like, here's a video of it.
And then she had just she just came to set
like two or three weeks ago. She made me a
little bracelet and everything else, and she's like, I made
you yours with the large beads. Everyone, you're the only
one that has the large because we're friends from a
long time. Think you're right, but that is that is
just these things you never know. Oh, that's why you
(50:02):
make full encounters and you treat people with respect because
down the line, down the road, you don't know how
things shake out. And this is an instance where I'm
now this is executive producer, former Army Ranger is more
inclined to trust me because he's seen these aspects that
that he needs for this character, the strength and and
(50:23):
the h and the tenderness in a way, and he's
seen them on display in the flesh kind of around
the work, around the way.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
And I said, you know, speaking of respect, and as
as we close the show, one of the things that
I've noticed in every interview you've ever done and every
encounter I have with you, you always have made a.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Point of remembering.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Every individual that it's a part of telling the story.
You give them their flowers, you know their first and
last name, and you're making sure that every time you
bring up a job, you know, you make sure you
mentioned every single person that that touched your process, and
you give them their flowers, and you give them their
credit and and for them, you know, sometimes it's just.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Being remembered, you know. It's it's not about the credit.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
It's about just like remember, being remembered that we all
shared a very special storytelling moment, you know.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
And look, this is like the so the signs.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Of other people behind, you know, behind us remember and
then thinking about us, you know. But but but Gary,
I'm so stoked that you spend all this time with us,
here to do with us, and and that you were
able to share all those amazing stories. Brought up so
much memories of all the things that you know, we
we've kind of coexisted with and uh, you know, we
were just so thrilled to be able to tell you
(51:40):
how much we we love you and respect you and
can't wait to see you wait and win and I
love you.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Guys, and that's just it's uh, it's even at this
moment to to to like kind of tread the stones
that you guys laid, and that's that's that's the truth
of it, you know. And uh, I kind of made
my bones a little later in my career. And you
guys at such young ages were able to to deliver
(52:10):
and to make people respect us, to make people respect you,
so that the door was open when I got there,
and I intend to make sure the door's open for
people behind me. And that's how we keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Man, you're making your culture incredibly proud. Do you wanna
do you wanna take us out?
Speaker 2 (52:27):
All right?
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Hey, this is Freddie Rodriguez and.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
I'm Wilmer Valderama, and thank you all for listening to
this beautiful and thank you Gabriel Lune for being here
with us.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah. The next episode next one.
Speaker 5 (52:46):
Those Amigos is a production from WV Sound and iHeartMedia's
Michael through That Podcast Network, hosted by Me, Freddie Rodriguez
and Wilm of Valdorama.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Those Amigos is produced by Aaron Burlson and Sophie Spencer's Abbos.
Speaker 5 (53:00):
Executive producers are Wilmri vald Ramo, Freddie Rodriguez, Aaron Burlson,
and Leo clem At WV sound.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
This episode was shot and entered it by Ryan Posts
and mixed by Sean Tracy and features original music by
Madison Devenport and Halo boy Our.
Speaker 5 (53:14):
Cover art photography is by David Avalos and designed by
Deny Holtz.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Clau and thank you for being a third Amigo today.
Appreciate you guys always listening to those amiingos.
Speaker 5 (53:24):
For more podcasts from My Heart, visit ther Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
See you next week.
Hey, I want about Dramaddie rodrig I'm very proud to
bring to you part two of our incredible conversation where
our brother Gabriel Luna here.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And must go on.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Part uh kicking things off with how did that process happen?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
How did you even that was? You know what was
wild about that is around that time I had just
so happened to stumble upon a podcast of Robert Patrick
talking about the process of becoming the T one thousand,
and then shortly after I listened to this podcast, I say,
(00:44):
like a week later is when I got the call
that they wanted to bring me in for this and
I went in to see the Ray Mayfield was was
our casting director on that and and so began almost
the exact same mirror process that Jim put Robert through
(01:04):
when he was a T two one thousand. First thing
was the first casting thing, the callback was with Tim.
I remember seeing Mackenzie come out of the room. Kenzie
Davis said, just did her, who eventually was cast as
Grace in the film call back leave there. Next step
was to go meet with Tim at his office and
(01:26):
I and this all happened to Robert. This is exactly
as it happened because then Robert went to go see
Jim Cameron. They met together. Then they had a stunt
assessment with the stunt team, which is what he went
through and what I went through with the Phil Silvera
who was the stunt.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And this ten assessment is pretty much like can.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
You yeah, what do you how do you feel? How
do you move? And everything else, you know. Then they
bring me in, they teach me some coreo of a
certain fight and I have to do the fight with
Freddie Boschiegas, who is our fight coordinator, who is now
the president of Stunts Unlimited, and I love him so much,
He's one of my favorite people. Yeah, and so Robert
of course went through the same thing I went. The
(02:02):
next step was I was waiting and then meet with
the sky DNSK, go meet with David Ellison, who was
the producing the film, and so once again parallel perfectly
with what Robert was experience experiencing at the time, he
went to meet paramount at the time. Yeah, so it's
just all kinds of crazy, kind of interwoven moments. But
(02:23):
then I remember after that being in a little bit
of a holding pattern. I was buying a house at
the time, so that kind of kept my house I'm
in now, kind of kept my mind off the process
because it was just a lot of waiting. But it
felt like it was all going along the framework that
(02:44):
I had heard Robert talk about in this podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So I was like, okay, We're like okay, so where
am I in the progress?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It feels like I'm at the end of it now.
And then they were like, well, Tim calls me and
or the team calls in. They're like, they want to
screen test you. And I was like, okay, man, whatever
they want. Went to Blur Studios. I met with Tim
Miller and he brings me aside and he's like, Gabe,
he'll hold me by the shoulders, like you are my guy.
But Jim wants to meet his screen test chief. And
(03:11):
I was like, yeah, man, whatever Jim wants. And he's like,
because I'm telling you, I told him, you know, he's
the guy. I don't need to do this. But he
told me that he once built a whole This is
Tim talking about Jim Cameron. He said the Jim once
built a whole forest rainforest for a screen test, which
is apparently what he did for Sam Worthington when he
was testing for Avatar just built a whole like, yeah,
(03:34):
full on set of Pandora for him to do his
screen test. So he's like, so Tim, just test the kid,
and so we go in there. There's a one scene
where I'm talking to these two border guards after I
just ripped through you know, twenty thirty border guards, like
basically like border patrol guys. I infiltrate as a border
(03:55):
patrol looking for the target and then just like ripped
through this entire detention facility, which at the time was
was really really timely, you know, considering how people were
being treated and people being detained and held for you know,
interminable amounts of time. And uh So I did that
(04:16):
scene for the screen test, and then I was done,
I'd say about a week later. Once again, about to go,
I get the text from my wife, which is the
grocery list. Once again about to go to Trader Jokes,
but I'm like, well Trade Jo is getting a lot.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, this episode has been brought to you, and so
uh and so once again no one around just get
the call that you know.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Tim called me. The opportunity was was incredible.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
And was the was the role written Latino or were
you just like the best dude.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, I think, uh, I think the idea was. I
don't know where the you know what the I I think,
I think yes, I think. Well, first of all, the
machine is a kind of a has a kind of
like this polyalloy basically a kind of a T one
thousand exoskeleton liquid skin, and then a ENDO skeleton which
(05:21):
makes it more durable, much like the T eight hundred.
So it it's both and it can split and become
essentially the shell which is the T one thousand and
an endo and kind of coordinate and triangulate on the target.
So there was that aspect, so it could be anything.
It could obviously transform into anything. Yeah, but the target
played by Natalia Reyes was from Mexico City, So if
(05:44):
you're going to send a terminator to Mexico City, you
make them look like the local populace. And and so
that was part of it, and just kept that general
look throughout the thing and transformed into a couple of
different people while I was along the way hunting them.
Another instance where everyone was, you know, making their jokes
(06:05):
and oh, it's the tea, and then I was.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Waiting when that was gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, Yeah, and it did without fail. But once again
when it come out, when it comes out, people forget
that aspect of it. Yeah, because if it's performed, you know,
with diligence and care and focus. And you know, because
I trained so hard for that, and I gained twenty
(06:31):
two pounds of muscle. I read the dow JIQUNDO over
and over again, back to back, because my whole thing
was which is of course Bruce Lee's book about efficiency
of movement, no wasted movement and how anything that isn't
fighting should be shed because anything beyond what is fighting
(06:52):
is what he calls organized despair. You know, any kind
of like flourishes or wushu or anything like that. It's like, no,
if it doesn't get the job done towards the end
of neutralizing or eliminating your opponent, then doesn't factor. Right,
if it's not fighting, it isn't fighting.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
And did you read that and subscribe to that, Like,
did you feel that the character embodied that philosophy.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Or well, the character as a machine would would be
the most efficient. Yeah, and would take the shortest line
from ad B towards the target. Every movement, every step,
every strike would be towards the target, even if he
was engaged with another target. So that was kind of
my philosophy there. And then of course I put on
(07:37):
twenty two pounds of muscle training my butt off, knowing
that at one point I was going to be sitting
in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course, and I didn't
want him to look at me and think that he
could squish me like a bug and beny your beauty.
And so I remember the first time I met him.
He came in for hair and make up test. Bill
Corso or makeup artist, the legendary Academy Award winning special
(07:58):
effects makeup artists, Bill corp Show was painting his like
battle damage onto Arnold, doing like a test. And while
he was doing that, Arnold was meeting with Susannah, one
of our makeup artists from Spain, because we shot the
first I think two months in Madrid. Susanna was there
just gushing over the fact that her father was Arnold's
(08:20):
makeup artist on Conan. Oh, and so Arnold had been
there in al Marilla decades ago making Conan, and here
he was now working with the daughter of his makeup
artists in that film. So he's been just employing generations
and Spanish makeup artists and uh and she and I
(08:42):
was just it was such a beautiful story and I
didn't want to, but they brought me in to meet him.
But I was like, no, no, there's there's a there's
a beautiful thing happening there. Just let them. So I
just sat on the other end of the hair makeup trailer.
And finally they had finished their conversation with Susannah Labb
and Bill's like, Arnold, this is here's Gabriel. And he
turns to me and I see like half his face
all ripped up, and I shoul probably turned a camera this
(09:03):
way half his face all ripped and and he goes
and I stood up. He's like, wow, look at you.
You're ripped. Look at this guy. And I just that's it.
That's That's all the encouragement I needed. And then we
went on to become very close. We would train, you know,
(09:26):
three four times a week together at flex gym and
Budapest shout out to Adam Cislasco, who owns the gym,
and it was so cool, man, it's a that that
gym in Budapest is legendary. I mean, everybody's been there
at the Rock. Henry cow Henry was there, he was
shooting the Witcher. He was actually there where we were there,
Will Smith and Jamie Fox and they're all on the
(09:48):
walls there. And of course Arnold now prominently placed. There's
like a T eight hundred statue of him and the thing. Albert,
who was Arnold's kind of who's kind of a patron
of Arnold when he first moved to the States. Albert
used to run bodybuilding competitions in Europe. He's based out
of Germany. And Albert actually donated these old machines, these
(10:13):
old weight machines that are from the sixties. They're all chrome.
They polish them up and now it's basically like a
living museum at Flex Gym and Budapest where you can
train on these machines that Arnold was training on in
the sixties. So you can you can you can use that.
There's pictures of Arnold on the machines from that era.
Albert donated this.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I didn't think that that would be an actual exhibition
for anyone who's like a fit, you know what I mean. Oh,
this is an exhibition that you can also interact with
that iconically was established by someone that iconic was a physique.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I got, like a pilgrimage.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Isn't that cool? It's just a whole idea that they
did that. But now there's on that wall there's a
huge picture of myself and then be huge picture of
me and Arnold together next fifteen eight hundred statueses. And
so he and I just became you know, we're part
of this very small fraternity of people who were determinators.
(11:10):
But beyond that, he's become this father figure to me
and somebody who I, uh, if some cool stuff is
happening in my life where you're kind of an older brother,
and I'd say that he's kind of the father figure.
And like I was at WrestleMania a couple of months ago,
and I was just like, Arnold loves he speak really
(11:31):
good friends with superstar Billy Graham, So Arnold loves wrestling.
So yeah, you know, he only FaceTime my FaceTime. I
was like, check this out. He's like, wow, how many
people are there? Sixty three thousand. He's like, whoa, it's
a lot of people. All right, I love you have fun,
but you know, just whatever, if there's some cool stuff
going on. I just call him and just to hear
him in his excitement.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And that's a genuine man too.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
It's just so I still ever wonders about this whole
process about making movies. Others like, yeah, seems like he's
such bad still passionate about that. And I've seen your
friendship with him kind of played out, and uh, and.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
I've always been like, man like, I don't know what
it'd be.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Like to be like Arnold, Like I'm doing biceps now,
like you know, like like I'm a trying to do
with squad, what would be the most effective school.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I'll tell you. I'll tell you how he does how
he does biceps. He likes the preacher curl. Uh. He
likes curls of all sorts, curls for the girls.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Girls.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But Arnold's thing is slow, slow on the negative, that's right. Bang,
explosive on the on the rep and it's slow on
the negative. Bang, that's how it is. And the way
he just trains dude, it's like a machine. I mean,
everything is form is perfect, everything is perfect. The timing
of it is almost like a metronome, and it's just
it's amazing. Enjoy every rep. Absolutely, he feels it. He
(12:52):
feels every single every single rep. And I remember training
with him in flex and just being kind of in
all of it. There's just four of us and one
of our first training sessions together and I'm doing triceps
on the on the cables and he's there with his
counting off the reps and he's got you know the
German three that we all learned in The Glorious Bastards
(13:12):
that this is the German three. If you do this,
you get killed if you and and it's it's still
to this day as I'm speaking about it just seems
like someone else's life.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But right, but you you have what I lead h
I will say, Man, you've been able to not just
live up to your dream, but now you're in a
(13:44):
position to, you know, continue to tell stories and a
level that you know it's it's again becomes the dream
of the next Caralina. You know who's going to be
the next Girlina is looking at you and be like, ah,
the last of us, right, like that character. And by
the way, you're like so to seem stealer, bro, like
you know what I'm doing? See with him and the
last of us, they were just like he's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
What do we do more of this guy?
Speaker 5 (14:07):
And you and Page are so believable. Yeah, the brother
guys are perfect together.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, we survive your chemistry the way you know,
how what is that? What was that experience? Like, you know,
the Last of Us was such a you know, people
always and before teen years ago, people were really cynical
about like, oh, a video game, a comic book. Yeah,
you know, but it really is like, if you have
the right tools to tell the story from the character perspective, first,
(14:32):
it doesn't matter how extraordinary or how big the world
is around you, because the story it really is about
the individuals living it, not like look at how big
this is, look at the stunt, at the monsters.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So they really got that one masterfully.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Did the Carolyn Stras produce that one? She did? She
did you work to Carolyn? Well, that's just I mean,
that's HBO. Yeah, the lineage of that Sopranos, Game of Thrones,
all the things that she's worked on. Yeah. Mark my
lad who Cartage, who became was a director, became an
ep of Entourage, was won an Emmy for Succession all
(15:10):
the episodes he did there.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Of course, by the way, little connection there too. He
directed the pilot to Minority Report, which was we did
this one season on that show on Fox, and he
came and directed the pilot and he had just been
back from Game of Thrones, Yeah, because he needed directing
some of the biggest episodes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What a beautiful person. Beautiful person, beautiful, incredibly talented guy.
One favorite directors I've ever worked, very kind, can do scale,
can do sci if I could do action, can do this.
But but once again knows that you know, it's really
about that person, that person and them standing in front
of each other and expressing themselves and that that is
(15:49):
so Yeah. So that's another kind of That's the thing
with HBO. You know, this is the this would have been.
This is the third time I've worked. I did the
day player role that I did HBO when I was
in Austin Brandon, I did True Detective and then The
Last of Us. And they always keep it in the family.
You know, I'm sitting there with Jeffrey Wright who was
(16:11):
in Westworld, and Routina who was in True Blood, and
Pedro who's in Game of Thrones, in Bella, Game of
you know, it's just like family, and that's why I
love working with HBO. Yeah the uh Carolyn is Yeah,
it's amazing. So when all that came together, it was
it was a really hot kind of property. That was
that everyone knew of it and was coming up and
(16:33):
everybody speculating who's going to get cast, and and then
when Pedro was cast as Joel, it did kind of
flash in my mind. I was like, I think I
could play that guy's brother. I knew that they're brother character.
And then I didn't think about it again. And then
when I was still on Twitter, I remember seeing, uh,
I mentioned this this kid a lot. I actually met
(16:55):
them at a London comic con one time. There was
a young young girl who just threw the idea out
there and it got a lot of attention on the internet.
They the possibility that I could play it. I was like, oh,
that's kind of cool just seeing somebody in the out
in the yeah, just say it. And then I was
(17:15):
like okay, yeah. Once again, didn't didn't really register beyond that,
and then month and a half, almost two months later,
my team calls says, Craig Mason and Carolyn Strauss want
to meet with you about playing Tommy Miller and the
last of us, and I was like, They were like,
are you familiar with the game? I was like, no,
but I can get familiar. And so I went on
my PlayStation. I got the game and I started playing it,
(17:35):
and I realized that they were from Austin, Texas. Oh,
like the characters themselves are from Austin texts. Yeah yeah,
And I was like, I can do that. I know
what that is, and and sure enough it all worked out.
They wanted me to play Pegris's brother for that. Did
you have to test for that or like? Well, yeah,
(17:57):
So what they did was they called me. Craig and
Carolyn wanted to meet me, even me, and we met
me Carolyn and Neil Druckman, the creator of the game
and one of the directors. I'd say Craig is our
Shue runner, and we just met. We talked for about
I think forty five minutes. Found out that Neil and
I have the same birthday. We're both born on December fifth.
(18:19):
We share a birthday with Little Richard and Walt Disney's
griffritz Lange. That's great. I go to Disneyland quite often
for my birthday because they'll always give me two buttons,
one for Walt and whatever one hundredth and seventy to
whatever birthday it is online, as I get closer and
closer one hundred and seventeen, and and then they said,
(18:40):
you know, we love you. We think it'd be great
for this if you wouldn't mine, maybe put down a
scene for us, And they sent me a scene from
the second game where Tommy is talking to Ellie about
going to Seattle. And I didn't know what that was
about yet because I hadn't played that part of the
game yet. But in between my meeting, or in between
(19:02):
them calling saying I had the meeting, to the time
I took the meeting, I had about three days. So
I played some of the game and realized all these
aspects of it that I had mentioned before from Austin,
that the dynamic between the brothers, everything seemed very kind
of in my wheelhouse. The fact that the character was
was a veteran, and you know, I've played a lot
(19:23):
of characters that have this kind of history and this,
you know, just experience on the gun. So he's a sniper,
which is I did. I had worked with Jack Neviles,
who trains army snipers. He was our military advisor for
Terminator and so already had a lot of this kind
(19:45):
of knowledge and experience, and so I told them all
this in the meeting. They all they were there eating up.
They loved it, and they was like, you know what,
you're kind of perfect. We just wanted you to kind
of throw this scene together. And I'm like sure. So
the next day I sent this scene. My wife was
my reader who is She's she's really funny. She's like,
you know what, I should do a sketch about how
I'm the reader to the stars and how my tapes
(20:06):
book reader to the Stars, so skin about how this
person is the go to reader in the town and uh.
And so we did the scene and sent it in
and they called me. I think within like three or
four hours. Isn't funny?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
How I really think they they know they're going to
give you the part. And it's like this song and
danstud just traditionally they gotta do.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I just it's just it's just, you know, everybody in
the meeting, everybody in the meeting knows. And then I
think it's you know, they just kind of shoot it
up the ladder or wherever.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
It's almost like they said that they did it. We
got to tell you, like, you know, you wonder your
favorite they even watch it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
They're like, I mean the fact that it came in
hours later. I was like, okay, yeah, that's what I've seen.
It saw.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It's like you were obviously the person who the whole time.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And so that was that was that, and I was
I was given all the scripts I think just shortly
before I should doubt and I and I played the
game for the next two months in prep. I just
kind of played the game, started seeing the casting announcements
come through, and everybody was of course got cast, and
(21:12):
everybody was questioning why and then we do the show.
We go out, this is post pandemic, so it was
still this was still it was a kind of a
masked situation. We were coming out of the pandemic doing
a show about a pandemic, wondering if people were going
to be fatigued about this subject matter. Not only was
(21:32):
it not only was it that not that it actually
was more so kind of this entry point for people.
They knew, they had the experience, They had this collective
knowledge of what that living through that is like, and
the fear that anyone around you could be can affect
you you know, and I remember going to Alberta crogery.
Alberta was in quarantine for two weeks FaceTime with Beether,
(21:55):
trying to get our relationship you know, built, and it
was really beautiful, just really easy man. He he. He
grew up in San Antonio for the first like five
years of his life. San Antonio is eighty six miles
down the road from Austin, and so we kind of
worked out some dialect stuff. He heard kind of my
voice and what I was going to do with the
(22:16):
the thing and tried to match some of that, and
we match some physicality and just have these discussions over
over FaceTime. And then the day I got out of quarantine,
I went to get to do my hair makeup test
and my costume fitting, and then my driver she asked me, so,
(22:37):
what do you want to do with your first you know,
what do you want to do? You're you're you're you're
out of quarantine. I was like, take me to the Hearthouse.
And the Hearththouse is the ancestral home of Brett Hart
and his family, his father's Stu heart Restler. Yeah. I
was a huge you know, growing up, I was a
huge and I am still now as I meant Heart Foundation,
(23:00):
so Brett Hart is I. So I went and did
my pilgrimage to the Hearthouse, and I lurked around the
gates and took photos outside, and there's this beautiful plaque
that says Hearthouse and with two Greco Roman wrestlers wrestling.
And then there I could see the basement from the street,
the world famous dungeon where Stu Hart, his father trained
(23:21):
generations of wrestlers, including his entire family, Brett, his brother Owen,
and his brother in law's Davy Boy, and Jim Knightheart,
who his tag team partner. And so I go home.
I come back the next day. Our COVID doctor fella
named Mike was like, what'd you do with your first
day of freedom? And I said, I went to the Hearththouse.
(23:44):
He's like, oh, you're a wrestling fan. I was. I
was like, yeah, I like wrestling. I mean, I love
Brett Hart. I mean I told him the story that
when I was a kid, after my mom got divorced
with my brothers, my brother Timothy's dad, our first outing
together as our new family unit, my mom, myself and
my little brother was to go see WWE at the
Frank Irwin Center in Austin, Texas in nineteen eighty nine
(24:05):
at Saturday Night's main event. We were going there to
see The Ultimate Warrior, and we left eternal Brett Hart
fans because my brother was. He bestowed the pink visor
shades onto my brother, which is his. It was his claim.
Two fames. Yeah, the first.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Please tell me he still has Yeah, he still has them.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Someone and he's like, he's he just held that over
my head for so long as I got. Look at
I got. Every time I tried to hold him, He's like,
you get Hell, those are mine. You can't touch it. Yeah.
And so flash forward to Calgary, Alberta. I'm shooting the
last of us. We're ending the first We're like round
the end of the first episode or something, and then, uh,
(24:52):
the same COVID doctor. Well he had told me earlier.
He's like, you know what, I know Brett Hart's appearance agent.
Maybe you can link you guys up. I was like,
that'd be amazing. Didn't think about it, just go to work.
One of the last days of the first episode. My
assistant comes up. She's like, I got my COVID on
the line. I was like, oh no, I thought I
popped dirty on one of the COVID tests. I was like, oh, shoot,
(25:13):
what's going on? Man, we're ready to hear him tell
me you need to walk off the set and you
needed whatever quarantine you again for two weeks. But it
wasn't that. It was hey, man, how would you like
to meet Brett Hart? And I was like, I would
love to go on. He's like, well, I gave him
your phone number. He's going to call you tomorrow. I
was like, well, wait, wait, hold on, he's going to Yeah.
I was like, wait, wait, I'm working. We're all nights tonight.
(25:36):
I'm not getting off until six am. When is he
in a call? He's like, I don't know, man, He's
just going to call you. And I was like okay.
So I worked all night, wrapped at six, drove the
hour from High River back to Calgary, went to bed,
woke up at like nine one another like situation with
Robert where I was just I didn't sleep very much,
but I knew something. I had to answer the phone,
(25:57):
and I I answer it or he calls me like
nine to twelve, so I'm glad I'm up. He's like
he gave this his Brett here you're a big fan
and my my son Blades a fan of Oars and
like we can meet up and you know, go have
a bite to eat. And I was like, yeah, that'd
be wonderful. I said, what do you want to do.
He's like, well, tomorrow we can go to Red's Diner.
It's kind of close to your house, and and I
(26:19):
was like, sounds good. And then I get off the
phone and my wife's laughing. You're like, you look like
a little kid.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And then the whole thing by the universe right like that,
You're like nine in the morning, you're talking to like
your childhood hero, and then you're making.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Just go get a bite. You're like, what, what's my crazy? Crazy?
Because then the next day I drive over that Red's Diner.
I get us a corner booth and I'm waiting for
him thirty minutes early because he's not gonna wait for me.
But then nine twelve o'clock comes around he's not there.
Well okay, so I go outside and look outside on
the patio. He's not there. He's like, oh shoot, and
then he texts me and he says I'm here. It's like,
(27:00):
where are you? I call him up? Sorry? Where are
you He's home in the patio. I'm looking at the patio
and there's no one there. I was like, okay, one second.
I go up to the hostess. So it's like, is
there another Reds diner? Like, oh yeah, there's one in Kensington. Oh.
I was like, oh God. So I get in the car.
I drive over to Kensington. It's kind of a kind
of a more kind of fancier. I mean, it's fancy
as kind of Calgary gets. And then I'm looking at everything.
(27:23):
Calgary is only fifteen minutes. Okay, So I go over there,
and but I'm looking at I'm just looking at the
patio from outside. I don't see brett Heart there. And
also this kind of part of town doesn't strike me
as the other place I just left felt very much
like a Bredheart spot. It's like old diner, brick, red
brick building, you know. And then I get to this
(27:43):
place and it's kind of new and fancy. I was like,
this doesn't feel right. So I started driving back to
the other place. Maybe I just missed him. But then
I look at my phone. He texts me and I
call him furiously. I'm sure, I'm so sorry. I'm all
my way, I'm I would never keep you waiting. He's like, oh,
it's all right, just take your time. And then I
look on the text thread and he had sent me
the physical address where I needed to go, and I
(28:03):
just had overlooked it. It was another Reds diner in
East Kenol, where he lives. But luck, once again, everything's
twelve to fifteen minutes away. So I drived to East
Calgary and there he is sitting outside, and we'd appreciate this.
As Latinos and people who love wrestling, we will probably
all love Ray Mysterio, and apparently so does Brett Hart.
(28:25):
In fact, Ray is probably his favorite wrestler, I think,
he says. And he's wearing a Ray Mysterio shirt from
a company called Roots of Fight that my buddy Jesse
Katz owns, And I'm looking at Brett Heart there in
his silver shock of hair, sitting right in front of me,
and we proceed to have a five hour conversation. He
(28:46):
tells me every single story straight from the horse's mouth.
He tells me about the Montreal screwdob against Seawan Michaels,
where Vince screwed him out of the belt. He tells
me Wrestmania thirteen with Stonecoat Steve Austin, and he's using
when he described the Montreal screwjob, he's using salt shakers,
sugar packets, pepper thing to show me where everybody was. Like,
(29:08):
so I'm sitting here, Sean's in the corner crime, my
brother and Davy and Jim are sitting here this salt shaker.
This is Vince coming in with Sergeant Slaughter and he's
just like doing the whole basically the floor map of
what happened when he punched this McMahon out, knock him
out with a nupper cut and laid him out on
the floor. So he tells me this whole story. He's like,
Davy boy always stole my towel, so I didn't have
(29:29):
a towel. So I'm naked as a jaybird as I
walk out, and I tell Vince, you better be out
of here by the time I get my clothes on,
and he's like, I only got my pants and one
shoe on. And I got up and I uppercutted him
and I knocked him out. I told me a little story.
And then he tells me the story about Stone goes.
Steve Austin wrestling at thirteen where Stone Colts is bleeding.
It's a very famous, probably the most famous WrestleMania match.
(29:52):
In fact, it's the first match to ever be inducted
into the Wrestlal, the ww Hall of Fame. And this
year's WrestleMania where I was in attendance, and I went
to have dinner with Brett and his wife Stephanie with
my friend Michael, who blew my buddy Michael's mind. So
we're sitting there Cosmopolitan having dinner and he was just
(30:12):
telling me the whole thing about the induction of the
match and everything else. I was telling Michael about how
Brett had told me about that match, and he used
a Sweet and Low that he folds into fourths to
show me the size of the blade, and then how
he taped it with his wrist tape and he left
a tiny little corner of the blade exposed, because traditionally
(30:33):
that's how they would you would get color and cut
yourself and gig, you know, and you usually do it
to yourself, but Stone Cold had never done it before,
so Brett volunteered to do it for him, but with
the stipulation that if the blade comes out, it has
to happen. You can't go back from that point, even
though at the time there was a strict no blood
rule that vincement Man had put in place, and not
(30:53):
only did they do it, they did it right in
front of Vince. He was never none the wiser. Everybody
thought that Stone Cold had that he had really potato
stone Cold and was bleeding, but he had kept the blade.
The tape is all the way around with the tiny
bit of it exposed, and usually you tape it to
your wrist with wrist tape, and Brett told me that
he had stuck it in his gums, So for the
(31:15):
entirety of the match, he had a blade stuck in
his gums. And then of course cut stone Cold takes
him into the ring, puts Stone Cold on the sharp shooter.
Stone Cold refuses to give up, and that was by
design because he had no real submission moves and they
had given him this finish where it had to be
a submission, And so Brett puts him in the sharp
(31:36):
shooter and he's like, the only way this works is
if the people in the three hundreds can see how
much pain you're in, and that's why you have to
get cut and he was right, because it's legendary. The
Stone Cold is bleeding from his face, he's pushing, he's
refusing to give up, and then he just passes out
and they ring the bell. And basically Stone Cold is
(31:56):
forever in Brett Hart's debt and loves him dearly, and
the love go two ways. Brett loves Stone Cold as well.
We all love Stone Cold from Texas because we're all
you know, he's from Victoria and I'm from Austin and
Stone Cold lived in Austin for a long time and
he just at that point made Stone Cold's career. And uh,
Steve has said this many times himself, and so it's
(32:19):
just to have these this this guy who I idolize,
tell me these stories and then have that match inducted
into the Hall of Fame this year at WrestleMania and
be able to sit with Brett his wife that night
after it happens.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Was was was stone Cold resistant at all to any
of sort of like where where Brett thought, yeah, oh
he was.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
He was at some point when the blade came out.
He says that Steve was like, don't do it, don't
do it. Oh, and then Brett was like, it's too
late and then and so they but then you know,
ever since then, it's been uh, it's been louded as
the probably the restaurant in you match. But anyway, after
(32:59):
I met with at that first time when we were
Reds Diner, he gives me a Hitman hat from Roots
of Fight. This podcast is brought to you by Trader
Joe's and Roots of Fight. And he gives me the
hat and he gives me his book and in the
book he signed the book and his signature is there.
(33:20):
And it's so funny because I remember, it's as if
that signature is emblazoned in my mind because when he
gives the shades out, he signs them, he pre signs them.
So I had seen his signature throughout my childhood on
that pair of shades that he had given my brother,
and now I'm looking at it again thirty years later,
(33:40):
thirty five years yeah, thirty something years later in on
the front jacket of his book, and I was like, wow,
that's so crazy. I remember this.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Only difference was now it has four hearts, where previously
it only had three, because each heart is representative one
of his children. And at the time he gave those
to my brother. And when we were at that show,
he only had three kids. Oh and since then he's
had his daughter, Beans, who's obviously an adult now. But
and I just remember seeing that. I took all that
home and I go back to my house and once
(34:08):
again I was like, you look like a goddamn kid.
So I have the hat on, I have the book.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
But it's so hard not to man, because I grew
up with with wrestling, to the Undertaker was my favorite. Yeah,
but as I was I was, as I was growing up,
you know, it was still very much bibuly And then
all of a sudden, I ended up doing that seventy show,
and that seventies show decides to do a wrestling episode
in partnership with WWF.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
That's right, WWF, and they especially in the seventies, well
in the seventies, Yeah, it was the WWWF back then,
so they stand.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The coolest part about it was that they decided, okay, well,
you know, we're going to do this special episode. And
we were the number one comedy so it was like
easy to get these cameos. So they send all their
up and comers, you know, they send the hardy boys,
then they send Can Shamrock.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
And the Rock Up and Comers.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Bro. That was the rocks first acting gig. By the way,
that was his first time him being on like a
TV show, like oh wow, besides like wrestling or whatever.
So he had to do this scene where he was
kind of playing his dad. Yes, yeah, there is this
actually hilarious picture. It's just me dressed dance faz in
between can Shamrock and the Rock and They're both doing
(35:37):
this like they're punping and I'm like pretending scaring.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Such a great epic picture for me, that is.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
But the point is like these guys roll up and
they do like some little stunt stuff and they'll show whatever.
But you know, like we're looking at the hardy boys,
and I'm looking at the kN Shamrock doing the year
where he had just like left the UFC and joined
right right, And to me that was a huge Well
I still am. I'm one of the most massive UFC fans.
And Dana White was a dear friend is still very
(36:06):
much a dear friend of mine. He would put me
in the front road, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
And then I.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Became friends with all those guys right like Rampitch Jackson
a huge like.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
A huge fan like you and I both know Spiders, yes,
and Anderson who's.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
The Michael Jordan of MMA, and and uh so, then
when Ken Shawnrock, who was one of my first heroes off.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Jeez Man back with the old man old logo, you know,
like the original one hundred percent and like he was
the baddest man on the planet.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
You know, he shows up to the set of seventy
show bro my brain just like exploded, like like.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I'm doing and I'm looking at the Rock.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
He's like, you know, he's doing the eyebrow thing, and
like at that time, everyone in the said, He's like
what is he doing with the eyebrow thing?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
It was like because he was.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Like looking out and he's like the most you know,
my son will be the most electrified man.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And you know, like he was doing the whole thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And everyone's like what is was that time? Was he
started off as like a good guy okay.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, and then he did he they he was he
they wouldn't receive him as this good guy that they
were trying to push it that he made his choice
to turn into this kind of turn. That's how he
became the most electrifying man in sports. Entertainment. How about
that's so crazy. That's so crazy because that is it's
it's it's our business is so funny because you know,
(37:26):
we're actors, but we want to be musicians, and the
musicians want to be actors. We all want to be athletes,
and the athletes want to be actors. It's just and
and and just to see how that all intersects. You know,
right now you talk about the UFC, which I absolutely
love as well, and the we're I was just at
UFC three fifteen with some of my Terminal List cast
(37:47):
mates because we were there as guests of Valentina Schifchinko,
which is the Flyway champion of the world, and she
is going to be She's just started acting. She was
in a picture called Bruised with Holly Berry and it
was just a now that she is joining our cast,
and we were there to see her to support her
because we knew we were in this trying to work
out this deal so she can join the cast. So
(38:08):
Valentina is going to be in The Terminalist with us
and we're going to share some scenes together, and so
we got to go see her in her fight and
the whole time it's just like, first of all, Valentina,
please win this fight. She was playing. She was fighting
mine On Fiarro, who was a great kickboxer, big big gal,
big for flyway and uh and number two, please please
(38:31):
don't hit her in the face. And not only did
she just she barely got touched because she was so smart.
I don't know if she even had this in the
back of her mind. I'm sure she didn't, but she
knews that she has. She knows that she has this
acting gig that she has potentially in a couple of months,
and of course it'll be much sweeter. She's still the
flyweight champion of the world, and of course it'll be
(38:54):
much easier if her face is and complete. Bits. You know,
she needs to have just a masterful, masterful performance, she said,
mine On, great, big, long limbs, great kickboxer, kept going
with this head kick, and without fail, every single attempt
(39:14):
Valentina pulls it. She pulls every single one, just whips
out front of her face and then she and then
she would counter every single time min On through this
this roundhouse to her head.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
That was the game plan. I mean, there was a
no knowledge that kick was going to be coming over.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh yeah, so they just crashed some time she pulled it,
not one of them had it, and I was like, wow,
this is incredible, and then she has She won the
fight that night was incredible as well because Josei Ado
I believe he won that fight. And I was just
talking to Anderson at the Ballerina premiere. What did he think?
He thought j W as well. We all thought he
did so. But apparently Aldo took the gloves off, retired
in the ring. Epic night. U uh we uh who else?
(39:57):
What else happened that night?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Yeah, that UFC.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Car JDM won the championship. That was pretty crazy. That
was nice. So yeah, we just had We had an
amazing time. And then we went and had a pizza
party with as one Valentina. Valentina let me hold her belt,
We said there, took photos together, We all had a
pizza because she hadn't had pizza in a few few weeks.
(40:22):
We had a pizza party. After you win defend your
flyweight champions I.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
Just did a movie with Speaking of wrestlers wanting to act,
I just did a movie with Charlotte Flair.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh yeah, Ric Flair's daughter shout out. Shout out to
Ashley Uh.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
It was.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
She was lovely, wonderful and and and such a great actress.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And I was like, this is your first movie.
Speaker 5 (40:44):
She was so prepared and so like, so spot on.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
You know, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, she's a legend number and that she's earned her
own legendary status.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
Yeah. And I'm becoming more you know, I used to
watch wrestling when I was a kid and then sort of.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Fell out out of it.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
But I've I've recently been trying to get familiar with
the times and and and you.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Know, people like her.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
You know, we would walk around with her and she
was like the beatles Man. Yeah, yeah, we're the Dominican
Republican people be like, oh my god. You know.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
And that's the crazy thing about that old stuff, you know,
it's it's we all love it as kids, of course,
but now it's such big business. It's it's uh the
w W E, d UFC or under the same umbrella
of course, ko and it's it's it's it's an entertainment conglomerate, right,
you know. And it's just and yeah, but they they're there.
(41:37):
Athleticism can never be short changed because it is a
extremely physical.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
I think they're the most the most fit, well rounded
athlete in the world. I mean, when people specialize for
a sport, you know, your body morphs into what he
needs to be for that. Mixed martial arts, it's like
everything in your body has to be a weapon and
it has to function and it has to be throwing
faster than the other person.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah, you think about the I mean, it's just a
well rounded thing.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
It is, Yeah, and it's it's something you know, I'm
a big kind of I'm a boxing purist in a
lot of ways. And but the thing about the UFC is,
while some people will become masters of a certain discipline,
you can't. You can never completely lean on that. And
(42:26):
you're and both hemispheres of your body have to be
active and you and they have to be able to respond,
You have to be able to engage. You have to
have them kind of act independently of each other in
a lot of ways, which is which is an important
skill set, spherical kind of way of being. And that's
what Rouce Lee. We talked about Bruce Lee earlier in
(42:46):
the daw Jikundola. That's exactly what he was. He was.
He was probably the world's first mixed martial artists, and
that's what they always claim, you know, that's what the
and right rightfully so, because that was his approach, to
not get tight in to any specific discipline, to not
narrow your your view of the world, because that's what
(43:08):
martial arts was to him. It was a man if.
It was a expression, a manifestation of the world through
your body in a very spherical way. And that's yeah,
to be able to to be ready in every direction,
be able to pivot in any direction. It's it's useful
in every in in all ways in your life, you know,
(43:30):
I think I think it's it's a the mental aspect
of that is applicable to us as actors. The it's
it's it's applicable to to my work, the work that
I have to do on the gun, where I'm working
on terminalists, for instance, to the idea that both you know,
both halves your body are working independently of each other,
(43:50):
but towards the same end. You know, to be able
to corporate that right and flow with these right, So
you're right, I think truly it is the most well rounded.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
And did you do some additional training, did you incorporate somebody?
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, yeah, we've we've done a lot of that we've done.
Of course we had to for Terminal List, right, for Terminalists.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, that's what is that your next thing right now?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Because that's what I'm working on. Then, right, next thing
to come out will be a show that I shot
also in Toronto called Double in Disguise. It's about the
John Wayne Gacy case where I play Detective Rafael Tovar,
who is was the lead investigator on the John Wayne
Gacey case in Chicago at the time. Amazing in the
(44:32):
in the seventies and what's the time, who was a
Texas guy from Crystal City, Texas who moved to Chicago
because they were looking for bilingual people to be police officers,
and then he finds himself as a lead investigator on
this horrific case that should be coming out on Peacock
in the fall.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And then I'm currently in production on the Terminal List,
which should come out sometime next year.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
And that's uh, the Terminal List. Yeah, yeah, my first
he's Nancy, were the bad guys?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, that's true, that's right, is that?
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, it's where the suspects of them big us guys
there were Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
I mean, hey, all the way up to Sect death Man,
a lot of people You're gonna trust anybody. There are
a lot of people involved that conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
M but I love that show. Terminal List. Say, when
I read that you were on it, I was.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Like, Chris, Chris does a great job. He's a great
leader on that show. He's he's he's uh pulled together
an awesome team. Jared Shaw, Max Adams, Raymondoza worked on
the first season is also a ta He of course
co directed Warfare with Alex Garland. I worked with Raymondoza
on True Detective many years ago, our head military advisor.
(45:52):
There was guy named Mark Simos. I think Chick Daniels
also worked on that the fella I mentioned before who
I worked with on Mattador. But as far as like
the seal teams and maneuvers, Mark Simos and Raymondoza they
were on their there, they were on the teams at
the same time, their first platoon they were, they were
uh deployed together. And uh, I love ray I mean,
(46:13):
and I'm so proud of him and what he was
able to accomplish with the Warfare film, which is authenticity
to a t. I mean it's it's uh, it's so
devoid of any kind of morality play. It's it is
completely devoid of any Hollywood bullshit. Every single round is
fired with having with a choice having been made, a
(46:37):
decision being made, the action. There's no super heroics. There's
just people trying to survive and trying to execute a
mission and eventually trying to extract casualties from this from
this scenario. And it's just a beautiful I mean, beautiful
is an interesting word to use, but it's a a
very impactful film, one that I'm still kind of thinking
about as I as I sit here. But Ray is
(47:02):
special and and he and Jared Shaw and Max Adams,
all the people who are our military advisers are amazing.
And they definitely have equipped us with the Rex skill
sets to move and make it look real. And you
know what I noticed too. But Ray was like, man,
I'm sorry. Jared was like, you know when we cast you,
this is another thing. When I took the meeting about
(47:22):
these got to do this job. Uh, you know, they're
asking me a lot of serious questions about conflict, about fighting,
why I feel about fighting. You know, My whole thing
is much with the characters I play much like the
characters I play, which I guess are just me and
all the facets of me. It's it's to be both
lying and lamb, you know, to be powerful towards the
(47:47):
towards the the for the benefit, for the protection of others,
and the strength to be utilized in that way, but
also to have the vulnerability and the softness inside to
care and be compassionate, to find the strike the balance,
you know. And that that's what I told them, you know,
I told them about the times I've been in fist fights,
and you know, but not in any kind of braggadocious way.
Just so this the sheer fact of it. Every single
(48:08):
every single one of those stories involved coming to someone
else's aid. And because you can say what you want
to me and maybe even you might be able to
strike me. Ah. But once that that force and that
Vince has turned to somebody who can't defend themselves, that's
where the line is drunk. And I was making this
clear of them, it turns my philosophy about fighting, and
(48:32):
they uh, And then they got to a point where
at the end of the at the end of the meeting,
they're like, they're like gave you're you're the guys. You're
perfect for this, and not just because of that what
I know about you and and how you because the
story won of the story has told us about me
coming into the aid. My buddy Beck Bennett used to
be on Satday yight Line and we got into a
bar fight and at the White Horse and.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
In Austin, Austin.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, yeah, the that's a long story. I won't tell
her here. The you knows. And then one of the
guys pipes up Max, He's like, you know, we know
you're the right guy, not just because the stories you
just told her, maybe you because you helping your buddy
back Bennett get out of his barfight, but because you
are both lying and lamb in the sense that the
(49:19):
lamb was on display when you did a dance contest
with my daughter in Chicago at a comic Con event
where they came up to your table, when you treated
her with such respect and such love, and I'm so
thankful for that, he told me. And the dance contest, yeah,
she came up, she started dancing. She wanted she wanted
to like have a dance off. And I remembered this
and I was like oh, I do remember that he
(49:40):
had a video. He's like, here's a video of it.
And then she had just she just came to set
like two or three weeks ago. She made me a
little bracelet and everything else, and she's like, I made
you yours with the large beads. Everyone, you're the only
one that has the large because we're friends from a
long time. Think you're right, but that is that is
just these things you never know. Oh, that's why you
(50:02):
make full encounters and you treat people with respect because
down the line, down the road, you don't know how
things shake out. And this is an instance where I'm
now this is executive producer, former Army Ranger is more
inclined to trust me because he's seen these aspects that
that he needs for this character, the strength and and
(50:23):
the h and the tenderness in a way, and he's
seen them on display in the flesh kind of around
the work, around the way.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
And I said, you know, speaking of respect, and as
as we close the show, one of the things that
I've noticed in every interview you've ever done and every
encounter I have with you, you always have made a.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Point of remembering.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Every individual that it's a part of telling the story.
You give them their flowers, you know their first and
last name, and you're making sure that every time you
bring up a job, you know, you make sure you
mentioned every single person that that touched your process, and
you give them their flowers, and you give them their
credit and and for them, you know, sometimes it's just.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Being remembered, you know. It's it's not about the credit.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
It's about just like remember, being remembered that we all
shared a very special storytelling moment, you know.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
And look, this is like the so the signs.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Of other people behind, you know, behind us remember and
then thinking about us, you know. But but but Gary,
I'm so stoked that you spend all this time with us,
here to do with us, and and that you were
able to share all those amazing stories. Brought up so
much memories of all the things that you know, we
we've kind of coexisted with and uh, you know, we
were just so thrilled to be able to tell you
(51:40):
how much we we love you and respect you and
can't wait to see you wait and win and I
love you.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Guys, and that's just it's uh, it's even at this
moment to to to like kind of tread the stones
that you guys laid, and that's that's that's the truth
of it, you know. And uh, I kind of made
my bones a little later in my career. And you
guys at such young ages were able to to deliver
(52:10):
and to make people respect us, to make people respect you,
so that the door was open when I got there,
and I intend to make sure the door's open for
people behind me. And that's how we keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Man, you're making your culture incredibly proud. Do you wanna
do you wanna take us out?
Speaker 2 (52:27):
All right?
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Hey, this is Freddie Rodriguez and.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
I'm Wilmer Valderama, and thank you all for listening to
this beautiful and thank you Gabriel Lune for being here
with us.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah. The next episode next one.
Speaker 5 (52:46):
Those Amigos is a production from WV Sound and iHeartMedia's
Michael through That Podcast Network, hosted by Me, Freddie Rodriguez
and Wilm of Valdorama.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Those Amigos is produced by Aaron Burlson and Sophie Spencer's Abbos.
Speaker 5 (53:00):
Executive producers are Wilmri vald Ramo, Freddie Rodriguez, Aaron Burlson,
and Leo clem At WV sound.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
This episode was shot and entered it by Ryan Posts
and mixed by Sean Tracy and features original music by
Madison Devenport and Halo boy Our.
Speaker 5 (53:14):
Cover art photography is by David Avalos and designed by
Deny Holtz.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Clau and thank you for being a third Amigo today.
Appreciate you guys always listening to those amiingos.
Speaker 5 (53:24):
For more podcasts from My Heart, visit ther Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
See you next week.
Hosts And Creators
Wilmer Valderrama
Freddy Rodriguez
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