September 17, 2026 • 50 mins
Bobby sits down with actor Dolph Lundgren to talk about the unlikely path that took him from studying chemical engineering at MIT to becoming Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Dolph opens up about dating Grace Jones, getting thrown into the Studio 54 scene, and how his life changed almost overnight after the movie’s premiere. He also shares the real story behind the famous Stallone hospital rumor, returning to the role in Creed II, overcoming a cancer diagnosis, and why his story is ultimately about persistence, discipline, forgiveness, and never giving up.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
When the camera's on, don't move a muscle. Stay still
and speak it through the eyes. So I did that.
The other two Russian guys were like a Russian Mr. T.
I will crush you. I will break you. And of course,
the next day, Stallone calls me. You got the part, kid.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey, everybody. Bobby here. Today, we're going to talk to
somebody who Man, I loved as a kid Dolph Lundgren.
And so, he's not Russian. He played the Russian in
Rocky IV, one of the greatest. villains ever actually if
he dies he dies and he's not even russian he's
from sweden and we talk about that he was drago
(00:47):
in rocky he was in the expendables universal soldier creed
to aquaman we do talk about the original he-man masters
of the universe movie and so he's got a book
here we go this is the book right here and
it is called fights worth fighting finding strength and struggle
And it's a very personal look at him and his story.
(01:08):
And we talk about all that, including his abuse, but
how he got to America, Rocky, his fight with cancer,
all of that. I think you're going to love it.
It was super cool for me. Here he is, Dolph Lundgren.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, everybody. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We have somebody that I think is super cool that's here.
And if you watch the show, I get to talk
to so many cool celebrities. But Dolph Lundgren's here. And
I got to tell you, this is really cool for me.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Just.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You were quoted today in my house. Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Can you imagine what the quote is?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Well, let's see. I've got about three choices. What is it?
I must break you. If he dies, you die. That one. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah. Yeah, my friend here and I, we were talking
about something.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
He goes, if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I was like, we're talking it off longer later today.
So congratulations on the book. I have it here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thanks, man. Yes. Why?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Why write a book?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Well... Somebody approached me about it, Harper Collins, a couple
of years ago. And I guess that was at a
time in my life where I thought, you know, yeah,
I've got a few things I can talk about. And also,
I had a documentary that I've been working on for
six years now. And I went through a cancer battle,
(02:29):
a huge adventure on its own. And I thought, you know,
after that, I came out being a little more kind of–
introspective and looking at my life and kind of appreciating
things a little more. So I thought a book could
come in handy.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Did you feel, cause I've written a couple of books
and I wrote one about my life and same, same
publisher too. They're great by the way.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Harper Collins. They're so good. Um, and so they, you know,
write the book. Did you have any stories in this
that you felt maybe a little too vulnerable, but then
you thought that's the point of the whole book because
that's the struggle that I had.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Um, Well, yeah, there were some. I mean, I've been
pretty open about my life all the way through. Actually,
starting in 2015, I did something. I did a TED
Talk about my dad, about the abuse I suffered and
so forth. And that was in front of an audience.
(03:26):
So that was pretty tough. I did the same in Sweden,
my home country. I did a radio show there. So
I think once I opened up, And it made me
feel better. And I think a lot of people responded
to it. A lot of men responded to it. Because
men are supposed to take anything. We're not supposed to complain,
you know, just soldier on. So I wasn't really concerned
(03:46):
about so much what I've been through. But obviously, I've
had an interesting life. I've met a lot of people. And,
you know, there's been positive and negative things. So obviously,
with some people, you don't want to, You know, there's
some things that are private that you just don't mention
in the book. Other things I chose to maybe talk
(04:09):
about a little bit, you know, because it was kind
of illuminating to people that hadn't been around in the
80s and Studio 54 or something like that and want
to kind of hear what it was like. So it
would open up about some things.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
So you were at Studio 54?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So just from me seeing it on television or seeing
clips of it, This is what it seems like to me,
and you can tell me if I'm totally wrong. It's
hard to get in. Everybody there is hot, and everybody
there is doing three drugs at once.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Two or three, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Was it hard to get in?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Not for me, because I was going out with a
famous singer at the time, Grace Jones, who was friends
with Steve Rebell, who was the owner. We got in
pretty easy. But there was a story in the New
York Times, a famous article, when they when they didn't
let Cher in one day early on, that's when it
kind of made the headlines. Whether it was true or not,
(05:08):
I don't know, but it was in the papers. But
there were a lot of people outside. And apparently, once
Rebell opened, he had like 500 people outside and like
10 people inside. And he wasn't making any money, but
he knew. He knew that those crowds, eventually, everybody would
want to come in and, of course... Once Mick Jagger
and everybody else, Michael Jackson, everybody showed up. I met
(05:31):
a lot of those people. It was interesting for me.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Did you dance?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Oh, yeah, sure. I had to dance with Grace. She
was the disco queen.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Did you dance to disco? No.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Whatever. No, I'm a little subdued.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
What was your specialty? Cause me, I grew up in
a school that wasn't all white people. You know, we had,
there was, it was definitely black and white. And I
just kind of followed what the black girls taught me.
And so I just, I just, was just grinding to
R & B music. Like that's all I did before
I did everyone on dancing with the stars. I just
was just grinding on butts to R & B music.
(06:08):
That was my style.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh, sounds cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
No, not at all. It was actually really awkward.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Um, I, I guess I did a little grinding maybe later,
later at night. Okay. Okay. Um, yeah, it was, uh, yeah,
but just as a detail, I, I, Grace took me to, um,
this uptown fashion boutique that was open, like a small
old boutique on Madison, 1983 or something. And it was
(06:34):
this new Italian designer. Nobody knew him, Gianni Versace. And
he took a liking to me. So he made me
this leather suit, you know, out of leather and rubber.
And I remember I wore that at studio a few times.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Versace himself made you a leather and rubber suit.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, right. Yeah. And unfortunately... Uh, when we broke up grace,
you know, she had this kind of voodoo side to her,
which she was like, she ended up burning all my clothes.
And that was one thing that went up in smoke.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
How amazing would it be to have that right now?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, it would be cool. But you know, easy come,
easy go.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
When you did the Ted talk, cause that's extremely vulnerable
to talk about your dad and abuse.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I found whenever I've been, uh, vulnerable about, for example,
like my mom was a drug addict. Like she had
me when she was 16 years old. And I always
felt kind of not embarrassed, but I didn't want people to,
to be, to feel sorry for me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I was sharing it. So the people could be heard
and people could be seen, feel seen. Yeah. Whenever you
tell that story, did you struggle with, I don't want
people to feel sorry for me. I'm telling it because
there are people out there that maybe have been through
this that don't feel comfortable with it.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Was that some of the motive? What, what would motivate
you to tell that story?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Um, I think on the deep level, I think I
wanted people to understand me a little bit more. You know,
where I was coming from, why I became a fighter,
why I ended up doing all these action movies, why
did I leave Sweden for an insecure future in America,
(08:20):
why did I leave MIT to become an actor, all
those things. So I think It was kind of a
soul-searching experience for me, and I was aware of that
a lot of people suffer abuse. And so I did
tell it for those people as well that perhaps felt
they can't talk about it. And I remember a few
(08:42):
months later, I was arriving at LAX, and I came
out of the international terminal, and they always make the
drivers move on, you know. keep moving or whatever, and
don't stop at the curb, whatever they say. And my
car was out there, and I came with a rep,
you know, and there was a big LAPD motorcycle cop
(09:03):
there with the boots and the balloon pants and the
guns and the whole thing, mustache, and it looked like
out of a, you know, out of a cartoon. And
he'd left them, and the rep said, oh, he let
me stay here, you know, because he wanted to meet me.
So I shook his hand, and he said, I love
your movies, man. But I love you, Ted Torquemore. Really? Yeah.
(09:25):
And I saw a flicker in his eye, like, why
is this guy standing here in boots carrying a gun?
You know, okay. Maybe he had a similar upbringing. You
never know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Man, that gave me chills a little bit. Because, like,
you added value to that guy's life.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And you had never met him until then.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Never met him since, no.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But you had given him something.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah. It was cool.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Wow, that is really cool.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You moved from Sweden... Which, by the way, I think
most people will be shocked. You ain't Russian.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I know. Sorry about that. You can relax all you Ukrainians.
I'm not going to do anything.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
When you leave Sweden to come to the States, was
it for school?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it was to study chemistry.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, what people may not know is you're brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I was maybe before Rocky hit me in the head
25 times per round. Yeah, I studied chemistry, chemical engineering,
and that's how I could travel. I couldn't afford to travel,
so I got these scholarships to come to Australia, to America.
And then I met Grace, actually, in Australia when I
(10:34):
was doing security there at the rock concert because I
was a karate fighter as well. On top of being
the engineer, I was a karate guy, and that's how
I met her.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's like J-Lo. You're like a three-star. She dances, sings,
you do karate, you do chemistry. When you were studying chemistry,
was the plan to actually do something in that field
or was it just to use that like you're saying
it allowed you to go places?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, it allowed me to go places. And I think
on a deep level, I knew I was not going
to be a chemical engineer. Like my dad was an
engineer and my older brother's an engineer, but I didn't
want that life. It was a bit, it wasn't exciting enough,
but I didn't know what I was going to do.
And of course, Miss Jones shows up, you know, and
(11:25):
kind of eyes me outside of her dressing room and
ended up going with her to New York City. And
I had like six months off between finishing school in
Australia and going to MIT. So that's the six months
where I decided, you know, Maybe test tubes aren't the
way to go for me. Maybe there's something more exciting.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So she just saw you working security. I want to
see if I get this right. She's famous and rich
and talented and is a worldwide known performer. She sees
you working security and goes, I'll have that. And then
you just went with her?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Well, it was something like that. Well, I was doing
security at her concerts for a few nights. And I
was with a friend of mine who was my sparring partner, actually.
He was a karate guy, boxer, actually. And he kind
of liked her a.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Lot.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But she picked both of us to do security at
a nightclub. She was going out with her entourage, about
20 people or so. And we were there. And, you know,
she danced with him. And he was kind of hitting
on her. And we ended up back at her hotel.
There was like about 15 people in her. She had
a big suite. Like I'd never seen a big suite
(12:45):
before like that from the inside. And then people started leaving. And,
you know, at some point there was five people left
and my friend left. And then pretty soon it was
like Grace, me, and somebody else and her manager. And
I was starting to like realize, oh, shit, okay. I
kind of started to, I stood, understood what was going
(13:07):
on there. And I missed a few classes the next day,
but it was good, you know?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
When was the first time you came to America?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I was 18. I studied chemistry.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
So it was for that. That was the first time
you came?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That was before, yeah. This is when I was 24.
So 23. At 18, that was the first time I came.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
What did you think of the States?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I loved it from the first moment. Did you.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
You say MIT. So Boston?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Washington State. That's where I went the first time.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Up on the northwest. I was an exchange student. I
could be somebody else. Nobody knew me. I didn't have
to be this abused little kid that was in Sweden.
I just felt I loved it. And people were really
nice to me, and they were interested in me and
interested in Sweden, some weird country that they'd heard of.
(13:58):
Or Switzerland, whichever. They got it mixed up, but it
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, that's a good point. I do that too sometimes.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I'd like to apologize in retro because I've done that
a bunch of times in my life.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
And I've confused Switzerland and Sweden. I'd like to apologize.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Sweden has the Vikings, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Sweden has the Viking. Switzerland has the cocoa? The hot cocoa?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Oh. The watches.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.
And we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Did you have good English when you got here?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, not that good. I mean, you're studying in Sweden.
You learn, uh, you start studying English when you're about nine.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Or 10 in school, regular school.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And so I studied English and some German, little French. Uh,
so I had some knowledge, but, um, but it wasn't
so much about that. It was more about America being
a great power, felt very powerful and exciting. And there
were a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Did, was it, was, were people warmed you at it
when you were 18, when you got here, like this
country was warm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
They were pretty warm. I, uh, I was scared of
getting thrown out of, you know, as, as an exchange student, they,
everybody was smoking pot, you know, and like partying. And
I was, I was just studying. I was, uh, Somebody,
after a while, they dragged me into some concert, and
I smoked some weed, you know, and I kind of like, oh, shit,
you know, like, I'm going to get thrown out of here.
(15:32):
But I think people liked me, and I was like
the foreign student on that floor in the dorm.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did anyone know your martial arts background?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
By then, I was like a green belt or something.
I studied martial. um, take one to in America too.
I did some, took some classes and boxed. They, I
wasn't that, I wasn't that great at it. I mean,
it was, it was kind of upcoming. I hadn't won
any tournaments or anything.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Did people try to mess with you generally speaking? Cause
you're large, large, good looking guy.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
No, not really. I, I, I boxed.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
No, nobody in a bar would be like, Hey, good
looking guy from Sweden or Switzerland in Australia.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It happened. Really? Because in Australia, they drink more, you know, Australians, Aussies.
And I was doing security. So I was obviously, you know,
I'm the first guy who gets in the way of
some drunk guy who wants to fight. I mean, I'm
standing right on the door. So it did happen there.
And I was scared there, too, of getting thrown out
(16:39):
or hurting somebody and all that. So it wasn't a
lot of fun, that part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
At about 22 or 23, where did you think your
life was going to take you?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
22 and 23.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Because you have all these paths at that point that
it could have been.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I think I became a champion when I was 22.
I was studying engineering. I wanted to get to MIT,
my dad's favorite school. I was thinking of doing a PhD,
and I didn't think past that.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
So you didn't have 15 years from now dreams?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
No, no. I didn't have a girlfriend. I had never
really been with any girls. I had like performance anxiety.
I think for my dad.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
When you say been with girls, like had sex with girls?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, maybe I had a few times, but not a lot. No,
I was scared.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Oh, if I was you, I would have never. I'm 12.
I'm at it. I can't.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
No, that wasn't me.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Oh, I thought, yeah, because I didn't get it either,
but until I was like 20, I was a virgin
until I was 20, but it's because I was a loser.
If I was you.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Well, I was a loser in my head. My dad
told me I was a loser, so I thought I
was a loser. But I had this other side who
wanted to prove himself.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
That's so interesting. You had all these paths that you
could have gone. Yeah. And you still didn't really know
what you wanted to do. And life just kind of
interjected itself. Yeah. And you have a famous girlfriend. Does that...
does that do people then meet you because of her
(18:15):
and see things for you like did you meet anybody
in that that did that like hey I'm her friend
but I work in casting did that happen at all.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
No I think how it happened was I was I
would go out with Grace and people would notice me
and I I didn't realize it but I was we
were quite striking together because I was tall blonde I
had short hair and she had the same haircut she
was black girl, you know. So I met people like
(18:46):
Andy Warhol through her who put me in his magazine.
And then I would meet people in the business. She
was studying to be in Conan the Barbarian. It was
an Arnold's picture. So I went to an acting class.
And then I ended up for some reason doing a
scene in the class. And I did some modeling as
(19:07):
well to get a green card. I tried to get
a green card. Um, so I think people started noticing
me that way. And I started getting, I was a
little bit famous as a fighter in Europe and in Sweden,
but I started getting kind of exciting and excited about, um,
trying to express myself somehow because I'd used fighting to
(19:32):
feel better. And when I was just abused kid, now
I felt strong. And then I realized acting can kind
of do the same thing because you can express something and,
you feel better afterwards.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Did you, did, did you have the freedom inside of
you to act initially? Cause I know it can be
hard even if you're doing like the warmup exercises. they
can feel goofy. Did you feel comfortable doing that at first?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I felt pretty goofy. Yeah. I felt insecure. I, I,
I just, I was drawn to it. And the coach,
he's not with us anymore. Warren Robertson, he had a
lot of, had, To watch some big actors. And he
saw something in me, I think. And he said to
(20:15):
me at some point, well, maybe you're not a chemical engineer.
You know, maybe you're an artist. Because I'd done painting
when I was younger. I did music. I'd done some
acting as a young man, as a young kid, as
a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid. So he said, maybe you should,
you know, maybe you saw something in me that I
didn't see. So then I got a little more into it.
(20:35):
But I always felt awkward. Because I'm sort of a perfectionist,
and if I'm going to do something, say it's martial arts,
I want to learn it from the ground up. I
don't want to take my time. I don't want to
rush into things. But with acting, I didn't rush into it,
but it saw me, grabbed me. Show business got a
(21:00):
hold of me before I really knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Was there a magnificent feeling of confidence whenever you start
to get different people that you've just been introduced to,
but your whole life you didn't have it because of
your home situation.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
And all of a sudden people start to tell you, Hey,
you're actually good at this. I feel like that would
be like an introduction to some sort of like inner magnificence.
Did you feel that at all?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah. I felt that in martial arts because I won
those tournaments and people started, uh, want to hang out
with me. You know, I can meet some girls that way,
which I couldn't otherwise, uh, because I was engineer and
engineer and not too sexy, you know, um, But being
a martial arts champion was a bit cooler. And then
being with Grace, I was this kind of big, very
(21:47):
physically fit, kind of very innocent guy who didn't really
belong in New York nightlife. It was like, where does
this guy come from? He doesn't drink. He doesn't do drugs.
He runs at 5. When he comes home, it's 3 a.m.
He gets up at 5 a.m., goes for a run, says,
I stood out a bit. I think that's what they
(22:07):
kind of saw in me.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Was there a point that you had to commit to?
I'm now going to act. I'm in, even though right
now I don't have anything, but I'm going.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yes. What happened was I, I was with grace six
months and met all those people, Michael Jackson. Oh yeah.
And David Bowie and a few people like that. Yeah.
You know what I did actually was funny. Cause I was,
I took my kids when I was in London for
a movie many years ago, five years ago, for Aquaman.
(22:41):
I took them to the Motown. There's a Motown musical.
And the finale is the Motown 25th celebration. It was
at the famous theater uptown in Manhattan. What was it called?
The Apollo.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When Michael Jackson did the moonwalk for the first time. Well,
I was there with Grace, right? This is 1983 or
something like that. I was there and David Bowie was there.
So it was kind of a trip that I'm sitting
there with my kids. And I said, well, I was
there that night. And they were like, no, you weren't.
I guess. Wow. So I met all those people. And
(23:25):
then I had to go to MIT in the fall.
I had a scholarship, a Fulbright scholarship, and it was
quite hard to get. And because I was studying in Australia,
and I knew I had to graduate number one in
my class, and I got sick. I was fighting in
the tournament in the Australian Open, and I just barely
made it. I was like, I was, you know, we
(23:49):
had two. So Drew with his Hong Kong, the guy
from Hong Kong, we both kind of finished first at
the same grades. So I made it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Grades, not fight.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
No, no, he couldn't fight at all. Okay, good. Skinny
guy with glasses. Anyway, so I had to go to school,
and I took, so the funny part was that Grace said, well,
I'll come with you. So I had this big Yamaha motorcycle,
(24:19):
1200cc black. So I drove up to Boston. in my
Versace leather with Grace on the back and her leathers. And,
you know, they're waiting for this star student from Sweden
to arrive, right?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Chemistry star student, right?
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. In Sweden. So they're looking up for this kid,
you know, whatever they had in mind. They didn't imagine
this thing, this sort of equipage show up with Grace
on the back. And I think I realized it's not
for me anymore. And I, I was there for about
a month and I left less than a month.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
What was the first acting job that you were paid
to do?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It was paid to do. Um, I think I did
some commercials, commercials through a modeling agency, but what the
funny thing is I went out for a couple of movies.
One was a Rambo two, which was a Stallone picture.
There's a Russian character he fights at the end in
(25:22):
a helicopter. And they wanted me for that part. But
at the same time, I was auditioning for Rocky IV.
And so at some point, they realized, wait a second,
it's the same guy. So at some point, Stallone, I think,
made the call. So they paid me off for that
first role. So I made like five grand or something.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
That you didn't do.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I didn't do. And they hired somebody else. So I
got like five grand or something. It was like a
shitload of money for me. I thought, wow, this is great.
And then I think the first, well, no, I was
in a Bond movie. I didn't get paid. I was
in a Bond movie. Grace was in a Bond movie
with Roger Moore. And there was somebody who hadn't shown
(26:03):
up for work on set. So they're looking for some
big guy to play a Russian hitman or like a bodyguard.
And it's like, hey, what about you? And the director
comes to me and I'm like, no, I'd screw it up.
You know, I can't do it. no, don't worry, you
can do it. So they gave me a gun and said, oh,
you stay here, you know, pull out this gun and
(26:26):
point it at Christopher Walken who's up there, you know,
in the stands. And I did it. And I'm in
the credits way like two minutes down.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
But they do show you at the end.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
So I don't know if it's urban legend or not,
but whenever Rocky IV, which is the best Rocky ever,
in my opinion, which is the best because of you. Well,
Me saying that?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Some of it.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Me saying that? That there were like 5,000 people that
had auditioned for that movie?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
For that role? Did you know that?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, I didn't at first because when I showed up
at this cattle call where there's a girl sitting with
a table and, you know, they just said, how tall
are you? And I said, 6'4, 6'5, I think it
was at the time. And they're like, oh, you're too
tall next. You're too tall. Too tall.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
To box against him because of the juxtaposition of you two.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah. But I saw a small handwritten sign that said
Rocky IV. And I was like, shit, a Rocky movie.
I mean, I was a fighter. I loved the Rocky movies.
I'd seen all of them. So I managed through my
acting coach to get a chance to audition for it.
And I finally met Stallone because they tracked me down.
And I was in Europe with Grace. Flew me back,
(27:40):
and I met him at Paramount here in L.A., and
he said, I've got 5,000 guys up for this role.
And then it's like, well, you've got to put on
some weight, you know, because I was kind of skinny.
I'd done mostly running and fighting, and fighters can be
quite skinny, you know, just big legs. So we did that.
(28:00):
We took some pictures in, like, boxing gear, and then
I realized I was up against a bunch of other guys.
So I had to practice more. a monologue, and then
do a screen test, which was about four months later
after I put on some weight. So I had to
do a screen test, classic old Hollywood style. They flew
me back from New York. I was here in a
(28:21):
cheap hotel somewhere, and I go down, and I haven't
eaten for like a number of days because I want
to be ripped, right? So we go down for a
cup of coffee, and the elevator's open, and there's a
six-foot-five blonde guy, some Russian guy, excuse me, and I'm like, Oh, shit.
And then so another one down there, big blonde Russian guy.
(28:41):
It's like, oh, shit. Okay. I thought I was the
only one, but I realized I'm up against the two
other guys, you know. So then we did our, we
had to put on boxing trunks, no shirt. We're standing
there in front of the camera. They got like a
dolly track coming in like this. And there's like 50
(29:03):
people behind the camera, a bunch of guys in suits,
Stallone and his bodyguards. And I'm like, oh, shit, here
we go. This is it. And then the thing is,
I'd practiced this monologue with my coach in New York.
And he said, you know, all of these Rocky villains,
they're very loud, you know, like Mr. T and Apollo Creed.
I will teach you a lesson. You know, so I'm
(29:25):
coming for you. I'm coming for you. So little Muhammad Ali, right? So.
He said, you know, you should play it very internal.
When the camera's rolling, don't move a muscle. You stay
very still and just say the dialogue, you know, speaking.
it through the eyes, you know. So, of course, he's
quite powerful in film, that kind of performance. He was smart,
(29:46):
so I did that. The other two Russian guys were
like a Russian Mr. T. I will crush you. I
will break you. And, of course, the next day Stallone
calls me. There you go, the part kids. I got it.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
The Bobbycast. We'll be right back. This is The Bobbycast.
How was your Russian accent?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It wasn't that great at the beginning, but then I
had a Russian coach for the movie, and he was
very smart. He had defected from the Soviet Union, and
he knew everything about how they took kids away from
their parents to become, because they saw, okay, this young
boy could be a great fighter. They say, test your muscles. Okay,
(30:38):
we're going to take them away from their parents and
put them in a camp, right? So they're all kind of,
they're not exactly fans of the system. So he kind
of designed my character a little bit like that. You know,
I fight for myself, like, you know. So he was
very helpful with the action. He was helpful with everything.
But I think in the screen test, I probably had
(30:59):
like a Swedish accent or something.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Another one of the urban legends that you can verify
or not is that you actually hit Stallone and put
him in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, we both get hit quite a bit. You can't
shoot like a 15-round fight in those days. There's no CGI.
Everything is in camera. Everything has to be flying out
of your mouth, the blood, everything. There's no way to
do that without getting hit. And we practiced for five months,
but You know, he wanted me to hit him to
the body really hard. And then we have those head shots.
(31:32):
So we both got hit. But I think what hurt him,
and I didn't know about this, was there was something
to the– he got hit in the heart somehow. And
I think he had some minor heart attack or something.
I read somewhere they had– I was told later they
had to fly him low altitude down from Vancouver. And
he was in a hospital here for a while. But
(31:54):
I just got two weeks off. I was happy, you
know what I mean? I realized, oh, shit, slice hurt.
And I'm like, oh, sorry. But he hit me a lot, too. But,
you know, I could take it. I was used to
the real thing.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
When you're shooting that movie specifically, did you know it
was going to be as great as it ended up being?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
No, I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
The first time you saw it, did you know it
was great?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yes. I went to the premiere. I had not seen
it because I wasn't involved in the editing or anything.
I went to the premiere and, you know, we pulled
up at Westwood. Grace looking fabulous in a big hat.
You know, people aren't looking at me. It's like they
want to take pictures of Grace and kind of shoo
me out of the way. And we go in there
(32:41):
and the lights go down and there's these two boxing gloves,
you know, Soviet. And then the movie starts. And I think.
And I come on pretty soon. I come on after
maybe five minutes. And I remember I was just sitting
there staring like, I was just, it was such a
(33:04):
good movie. I mean, Stallone had directed it, the music,
James Brown, all those tracks, the montages, and the Soviet-U.S.
kind of rivalry. There was a nuclear standoff going in
the real world. So it was like, it's a big deal.
And I was totally shocked. So when the lights come out,
(33:24):
And I kind of realized everybody's looking at me now.
And I was like, oh, shit, you know. It was like,
what happened? And we came out, and people were taking
pictures of me. And when they asked, interview me instead
of Grace. And so it kind of flipped in 90
minutes like that.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
On the way into the premiere, they wanted to talk
to her. On the way out, it was you. Yeah, literally.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
And it took me like, I think it took me
five years to recover from that. Yeah. Because I hadn't been,
it wasn't like I'd started acting for 10 years and, oh,
I want to be a star. And I wasn't ready
for it. You know, I was just like shocked, kind
of like blindsided, I would say.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Was it odd that everyone thought you were Russian?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Well, it wasn't odd because I did a pretty good
job portraying a Russian. But it was, yes, some people
still think I'm Russian. But I didn't really care much
about that, I think. I understood it. Um, but I mean,
I was a little, I mean, I wanted to try
(34:29):
to do other types of roles. So, I mean, uh,
the next role, which was meant a lot of pressure
for me was playing.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
He man, because I was love that one.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Well, that's because it's like a kind of American hero
or let's say a kid's hero. And I went from
this Soviet, you know, villain and somehow now I had
to be hero. And I felt a lot of pressure
to do that, you know? Um, And I was actually,
and I didn't have Stallone any longer to look after me.
And he was very smart and very helpful. He could say, no,
(35:00):
don't do it that way. You know, don't move too fast.
You know, like he's, you know, obviously he knows everything
about how to start an action movie. So he taught
me that stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I loved He-Man. I thought you were great.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, I was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, no, I didn't even have trouble going, oh, that's
the Russian. There wasn't to me. And again, I was
a kid, but I never, did you worry about being typecast?
Because I didn't feel like you were whenever you went
to that movie.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
No, I didn't. I've worried about it a little bit,
I guess. I think what it was, was I wasn't
really smart enough to hire the right people around me.
Like Arnold, for instance, a good friend of mine, he's
a very clever businessman and he already knew, okay, I
got to get this agent and I want to get
this guy and I have to, really think about my choices,
(35:52):
I was a little more like, oh, this is great.
I'm famous and I can be in the movies. And,
you know, oh, this guy seems to like me. I'll
take his advice. But I think as an actor, I
felt I liked that role. It was a sweet movie.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
The cameo in the latest one?
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Like, I don't have a question. That was just fun.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah. The.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
When you went back to Creed II?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I loved that role for you. How did you feel
about going back to play that same person? Obviously, it
was your kid at that point. How did you feel
about going back to play the same character?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I didn't want to do it at first. I didn't
like the script. It was kind of, the script was
a little racist in the first one, the first draft
I read. Towards? Towards Creed, towards Adonis Creed. And Mike,
the Russians in that script were kind of, they were,
(36:51):
they were not, they were racist towards, you know, the African-Americans.
And I didn't like that too much. So, you know,
but then what happened, funny enough, they ended up hiring
a Stephen Caple Jr. Who is African-American to direct the picture.
And then he rewrote it and he wrote a really
good script. That was so good. I remember reading the
(37:12):
script and it was like, wow. I mean, He wrote
this father-son relationship in there, you know, like I had
my dad. So now I got to play my dad against,
you know, against somebody who was not very nice to
his son. So it was kind of cool. I got
to relive that.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Do Russians ever think you're Russian?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
No, they don't. But they kind of adopted me a
little bit like their own little movie star or big
movie star because they don't really have any famous actors.
Even before this whole war with Ukraine and everything, I've
been to Russia a few times. And they like a
lot of other movies I've done, not just Rocky IV.
But I think when the Soviet Union fell apart, well,
(37:59):
right before, you weren't allowed to watch Western pictures. But
they smuggled movies in, like action movies, like my movies, Stallone's, Arnold's.
So a lot of those people, they know America through
these movies.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yakov Smirnoff. You know who that is?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Who?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yakov Smirnoff. Who is he? The Russian comedian?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
No.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
In Soviet Russia, you don't drive a car, cars drive you? No?
Speaker 1 (38:24):
No. Okay. Yeah, I heard some stories about that.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
He was like an 80s comedian. I remember him saying
stuff like that. But yeah, so not a big Yakov fan,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
No, but it sounds funny. Yeah, it's the one about
when Reagan told a story when they have to order
a car 20 years... like five years in advance or something,
or ten years in advance, they have to pay the deposit,
and then they get the car, because, you know, the
Soviet production is all centralized. So you get it five
(38:57):
years later. And then he goes, he pays his deposit,
and then he says, okay, we will deliver the car,
we will deliver the car, and it should have been
in the afternoon or the morning. And the guy goes...
This is five years from now. Who cares? He says, well,
(39:20):
I have to know because the plumber comes in the
afternoon or something like that. I didn't tell it right,
but it was anyway the way it used to be.
Like you have to wait for everything. Five years.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Did your dad see your success i'm not sure if
or when he died uh.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
2000 yeah he saw it and he was you know
by then he was a very kind of an older
uh bit uh you know i would say a bit
confused and and He saw it and he appreciated it.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Did you guys have a relationship?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, we did. I forgave him. I realized that he
had been mistreated when he was a kid. He grew
up during the Depression in Northern Sweden where people starved
to death. I don't know what happened to him, but
I'm sure he got beaten too.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Looking back at how disciplined you were, just generally speaking,
because for your school, for your fighting, for all things,
I feel like discipline was a through line in your
life are you proud that you had that discipline or
do you wish possibly you wouldn't have been as.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Disciplined no i guess i'm proud to have it because
i had also had a lot of trauma and other
things that could have like torn me apart and uh
could have destroyed me i mean self-destruction myself i was
very self-destructive at some point i mean not just with
alcohol and drugs and things but also with you know
(40:46):
stunts crazy sparring sessions, working too much, traveling too much, just,
you know, kind of, it's called escape behavior. When you
have a trauma, say you're PTSD, say you're a soldier
from Iraq, you come home and you've lived in fear
of your life for, say, a year. Well, it doesn't
(41:07):
just go away. And you try to get rid of it,
but it's inside you. Escape behavior, alcohol, drugs, sexual affairs,
I mean, all of those things. So I think the
discipline kept me kind of kept me together.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
I grew up as a poverty child, but I had
people because I didn't have a dad at all, but
I had people that stepped in. Like my high school
football coach helped a lot. Like it was a positive influence.
My youth director at church was a positive influence. Did
you have anyone that you look back at that you're
grateful that they existed in that time where you were
getting abused that you go, I'm so glad that they
(41:45):
were there to at least give me some sort of stability?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh yeah, for sure. While I was abused, not really.
I didn't have anybody. I was too little. I was
kind of isolated. My mom was, she was also abused.
So she was beaten. So she didn't tell me, but
As I got older, I had my karate instructor, I
would say, later my acting coach. And I've had other
(42:12):
people like that who I've looked up to, especially my
karate instructor, because I started with him when I was 15.
So I was just on that edge where my dad,
you know, at some point I started growing and he's like,
I'm going to end up in a fight with this kid,
you know, got to get him out of here. So
he sent me to his parents, to my grandparents. So
(42:32):
I was way in northern Sweden. And that's when I
started doing sports and I started doing martial arts and
things like that.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Did you ever get into therapy?
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Oh, yeah. Therapy. Not early on. I wish I would
have done it earlier, but it was not until I
was about 50. I started. And it changed my life.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Same for me. I was older, too, when I got in.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
How did it change your life?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Well, I became aware of what had happened to me,
and I found a way through that. I realized I
didn't have to act out, because otherwise you're acting out.
You may be in a relationship with a person, say
a woman, but you're acting out from something that happened
40 years ago. It had nothing to do with this person.
(43:23):
And I got control of that, and I ended up
not abusing myself, not doing crazy stuff, not drinking so much,
not doing as many crazy stunts, being more careful of
how I treated myself.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Was there ever a point you felt like you didn't
have to prove yourself to anybody anymore?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah. I think I still have that sort of ambition
to prove things to myself, I would say, if I
can do something. But I feel less... I think lately
in the last 10 years I've gotten, since the cancer,
I've gotten more just happy to be around, happy to,
you know, for what I've accomplished. And I can be
a little more kind to myself and kind of congratulate
(44:05):
myself for what I did.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
What was your cancer journey?
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, I got kidney cancer when I was, well, it's
10 years ago and 11 years ago. I was diagnosed,
had surgery. I was declared cancer free. Then I came
back and then I had to go through a lot
of different therapies, and I was misdiagnosed, actually. And finally,
things weren't looking too good, which is one reason I
(44:32):
decided to do the doc, because I didn't know if
I was going to be around, you know, for the premiere.
So I got this new doctor at UCLA who somebody
had recommended, and she told me I'd been misdiagnosed. I
had this unique form of mutation of kidney cancer that
there's a lot of medications against. And I got a
(44:52):
new medication, and within like a few weeks, everything was reversed.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
No way.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
And then they removed all these tumors, and they were
all gone. Within like one year, everything was gone. And
then I had to go through some treatments after that.
But yeah, so it's kind of like a movie, one
of my movies, miraculous.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
What are your feelings towards the doctors who misdiagnosed you?
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I wasn't too happy with it at the time. I
was thinking of taking some legal action. But then I realized,
first of all, it's a lot of work. You can't
make that much money. I was going to give it
to a charity. And I thought maybe, you know, I
don't hold grudges. But I'm sure that guy probably, if
he knows what happened to me, I'm sure he's going
(45:41):
to feel a bit sorry that maybe he feels disappointed
in himself and maybe glad that I made it.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Wow. And did you physically feel it once they corrected it?
Could you physically feel you starting to feel better and
be better?
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But when it was over, that's when
it really hit me because it's the shock to the
system when you, it's like my therapist, I have like
a cancer survivorship therapist. She says, you know, most people
swim on the surface, but when you've been down and
you touch the bottom of the pool and you come
back up, you're never the same again. And I think, yeah,
(46:21):
it took me two years to get back in shape
when it was over.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
What do you want people to take from your book?
Because you speak so authentically and open and honest, even
just the 45 minutes we've done this. Your book is
very much a lot of that as well. So what
do you want people to take from it after they
read it?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I think, hopefully, they can maybe, hopefully some inspiration and
maybe they can also draw some, maybe learn something from
it or, uh, maybe they can use it as some
kind of guidance if they have their own problems and
(46:59):
how usually persistence pays off, you know, and that you don't,
you can, you have to believe in yourself. You got
to keep going, you know, no matter what happens and, uh,
and take some chances and be, be good to yourself.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
What about your legacy? What do you want it to be?
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Um, Well, I think the most important thing is that
people speak well about you after you're gone. That you
were a good person. That you added, like somebody said,
you gave more than you took. You loved more than
you would love. I think to give more than you're getting,
(47:39):
that's important. That you don't try to keep some kind
of balance. It's better to give more than you receive.
I think... My legacy, I guess, is a bit as
an athlete, a bit as an actor, and I suppose
(47:59):
as a man, somebody who has overcome a lot of
problems and issues. I probably have a few more coming.
Hopefully not too many, but I think that's what it's about.
Never to give up.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Two final things. Did you ever memorize the periodic table? No.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I had to do it in school, yeah, but I
don't know if I remember it.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
That's pretty baller. That's pretty baller. That you knew the
whole periodic table?
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah. Now they've added some elements. What is it, 105
before or something?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah, that's dumb. It's like when they take planets away
and give us planets again. It's like, let's just settle
on that.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
There's a system to it, you know, because the elements
are related. You know, when you go down this way,
they're all similar elements. When you go downwards this way.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
My final question. You have every ability to say no,
mostly because you can beat me up still. I'm in
a cardigan. I'm light work for you at this point. Yeah,
whatever you want to do. So that camera right there,
if you looked at it, yeah, and you said Bobby Bones,
if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
That one? That one. Bobby Bones, if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Now I literally can't die that that's happened. I hope
that whatever your fulfillment is with writing this book, I
hope it meets you. yeah if it's selling a bunch
if it's changing lives i think about that police officer
story that you told like that made the hairs on
my neck stand up because you may have never met
that guy ever and you still affected him in a
(49:32):
way that helped his life and i hope this book
does that for people as well and i it's super
cool to spend time with you so i'm so grateful
that you stopped by i've been a fan for a
long time like i loved the original he-man like it
was It was A +. It was awesome. And Rocky
IV is the best Rocky for sure. And yeah, I
hope you sell 10 million of these. So there he is,
(49:53):
the great Dolph Lundgren. Here it is, Fights Worth Fighting.
Everybody go buy two copies. Buy two and gift one
to somebody. Thank you, Dolph.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Thanks for listening to a BobbyCast production.
When the camera's on, don't move a muscle. Stay still
and speak it through the eyes. So I did that.
The other two Russian guys were like a Russian Mr. T.
I will crush you. I will break you. And of course,
the next day, Stallone calls me. You got the part, kid.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey, everybody. Bobby here. Today, we're going to talk to
somebody who Man, I loved as a kid Dolph Lundgren.
And so, he's not Russian. He played the Russian in
Rocky IV, one of the greatest. villains ever actually if
he dies he dies and he's not even russian he's
from sweden and we talk about that he was drago
(00:47):
in rocky he was in the expendables universal soldier creed
to aquaman we do talk about the original he-man masters
of the universe movie and so he's got a book
here we go this is the book right here and
it is called fights worth fighting finding strength and struggle
And it's a very personal look at him and his story.
(01:08):
And we talk about all that, including his abuse, but
how he got to America, Rocky, his fight with cancer,
all of that. I think you're going to love it.
It was super cool for me. Here he is, Dolph Lundgren.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, everybody. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We have somebody that I think is super cool that's here.
And if you watch the show, I get to talk
to so many cool celebrities. But Dolph Lundgren's here. And
I got to tell you, this is really cool for me.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Just.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You were quoted today in my house. Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Can you imagine what the quote is?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Well, let's see. I've got about three choices. What is it?
I must break you. If he dies, you die. That one. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah. Yeah, my friend here and I, we were talking
about something.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
He goes, if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I was like, we're talking it off longer later today.
So congratulations on the book. I have it here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thanks, man. Yes. Why?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Why write a book?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Well... Somebody approached me about it, Harper Collins, a couple
of years ago. And I guess that was at a
time in my life where I thought, you know, yeah,
I've got a few things I can talk about. And also,
I had a documentary that I've been working on for
six years now. And I went through a cancer battle,
(02:29):
a huge adventure on its own. And I thought, you know,
after that, I came out being a little more kind of–
introspective and looking at my life and kind of appreciating
things a little more. So I thought a book could
come in handy.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Did you feel, cause I've written a couple of books
and I wrote one about my life and same, same
publisher too. They're great by the way.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Harper Collins. They're so good. Um, and so they, you know,
write the book. Did you have any stories in this
that you felt maybe a little too vulnerable, but then
you thought that's the point of the whole book because
that's the struggle that I had.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Um, Well, yeah, there were some. I mean, I've been
pretty open about my life all the way through. Actually,
starting in 2015, I did something. I did a TED
Talk about my dad, about the abuse I suffered and
so forth. And that was in front of an audience.
(03:26):
So that was pretty tough. I did the same in Sweden,
my home country. I did a radio show there. So
I think once I opened up, And it made me
feel better. And I think a lot of people responded
to it. A lot of men responded to it. Because
men are supposed to take anything. We're not supposed to complain,
you know, just soldier on. So I wasn't really concerned
(03:46):
about so much what I've been through. But obviously, I've
had an interesting life. I've met a lot of people. And,
you know, there's been positive and negative things. So obviously,
with some people, you don't want to, You know, there's
some things that are private that you just don't mention
in the book. Other things I chose to maybe talk
(04:09):
about a little bit, you know, because it was kind
of illuminating to people that hadn't been around in the
80s and Studio 54 or something like that and want
to kind of hear what it was like. So it
would open up about some things.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
So you were at Studio 54?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So just from me seeing it on television or seeing
clips of it, This is what it seems like to me,
and you can tell me if I'm totally wrong. It's
hard to get in. Everybody there is hot, and everybody
there is doing three drugs at once.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Two or three, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Was it hard to get in?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Not for me, because I was going out with a
famous singer at the time, Grace Jones, who was friends
with Steve Rebell, who was the owner. We got in
pretty easy. But there was a story in the New
York Times, a famous article, when they when they didn't
let Cher in one day early on, that's when it
kind of made the headlines. Whether it was true or not,
(05:08):
I don't know, but it was in the papers. But
there were a lot of people outside. And apparently, once
Rebell opened, he had like 500 people outside and like
10 people inside. And he wasn't making any money, but
he knew. He knew that those crowds, eventually, everybody would
want to come in and, of course... Once Mick Jagger
and everybody else, Michael Jackson, everybody showed up. I met
(05:31):
a lot of those people. It was interesting for me.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Did you dance?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Oh, yeah, sure. I had to dance with Grace. She
was the disco queen.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Did you dance to disco? No.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Whatever. No, I'm a little subdued.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
What was your specialty? Cause me, I grew up in
a school that wasn't all white people. You know, we had,
there was, it was definitely black and white. And I
just kind of followed what the black girls taught me.
And so I just, I just, was just grinding to
R & B music. Like that's all I did before
I did everyone on dancing with the stars. I just
was just grinding on butts to R & B music.
(06:08):
That was my style.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh, sounds cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
No, not at all. It was actually really awkward.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Um, I, I guess I did a little grinding maybe later,
later at night. Okay. Okay. Um, yeah, it was, uh, yeah,
but just as a detail, I, I, Grace took me to, um,
this uptown fashion boutique that was open, like a small
old boutique on Madison, 1983 or something. And it was
(06:34):
this new Italian designer. Nobody knew him, Gianni Versace. And
he took a liking to me. So he made me
this leather suit, you know, out of leather and rubber.
And I remember I wore that at studio a few times.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Versace himself made you a leather and rubber suit.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, right. Yeah. And unfortunately... Uh, when we broke up grace,
you know, she had this kind of voodoo side to her,
which she was like, she ended up burning all my clothes.
And that was one thing that went up in smoke.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
How amazing would it be to have that right now?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, it would be cool. But you know, easy come,
easy go.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
When you did the Ted talk, cause that's extremely vulnerable
to talk about your dad and abuse.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I found whenever I've been, uh, vulnerable about, for example,
like my mom was a drug addict. Like she had
me when she was 16 years old. And I always
felt kind of not embarrassed, but I didn't want people to,
to be, to feel sorry for me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I was sharing it. So the people could be heard
and people could be seen, feel seen. Yeah. Whenever you
tell that story, did you struggle with, I don't want
people to feel sorry for me. I'm telling it because
there are people out there that maybe have been through
this that don't feel comfortable with it.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Was that some of the motive? What, what would motivate
you to tell that story?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Um, I think on the deep level, I think I
wanted people to understand me a little bit more. You know,
where I was coming from, why I became a fighter,
why I ended up doing all these action movies, why
did I leave Sweden for an insecure future in America,
(08:20):
why did I leave MIT to become an actor, all
those things. So I think It was kind of a
soul-searching experience for me, and I was aware of that
a lot of people suffer abuse. And so I did
tell it for those people as well that perhaps felt
they can't talk about it. And I remember a few
(08:42):
months later, I was arriving at LAX, and I came
out of the international terminal, and they always make the
drivers move on, you know. keep moving or whatever, and
don't stop at the curb, whatever they say. And my
car was out there, and I came with a rep,
you know, and there was a big LAPD motorcycle cop
(09:03):
there with the boots and the balloon pants and the
guns and the whole thing, mustache, and it looked like
out of a, you know, out of a cartoon. And
he'd left them, and the rep said, oh, he let
me stay here, you know, because he wanted to meet me.
So I shook his hand, and he said, I love
your movies, man. But I love you, Ted Torquemore. Really? Yeah.
(09:25):
And I saw a flicker in his eye, like, why
is this guy standing here in boots carrying a gun?
You know, okay. Maybe he had a similar upbringing. You
never know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Man, that gave me chills a little bit. Because, like,
you added value to that guy's life.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And you had never met him until then.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Never met him since, no.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But you had given him something.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah. It was cool.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Wow, that is really cool.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You moved from Sweden... Which, by the way, I think
most people will be shocked. You ain't Russian.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I know. Sorry about that. You can relax all you Ukrainians.
I'm not going to do anything.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
When you leave Sweden to come to the States, was
it for school?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it was to study chemistry.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, what people may not know is you're brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I was maybe before Rocky hit me in the head
25 times per round. Yeah, I studied chemistry, chemical engineering,
and that's how I could travel. I couldn't afford to travel,
so I got these scholarships to come to Australia, to America.
And then I met Grace, actually, in Australia when I
(10:34):
was doing security there at the rock concert because I
was a karate fighter as well. On top of being
the engineer, I was a karate guy, and that's how
I met her.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's like J-Lo. You're like a three-star. She dances, sings,
you do karate, you do chemistry. When you were studying chemistry,
was the plan to actually do something in that field
or was it just to use that like you're saying
it allowed you to go places?
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, it allowed me to go places. And I think
on a deep level, I knew I was not going
to be a chemical engineer. Like my dad was an
engineer and my older brother's an engineer, but I didn't
want that life. It was a bit, it wasn't exciting enough,
but I didn't know what I was going to do.
And of course, Miss Jones shows up, you know, and
(11:25):
kind of eyes me outside of her dressing room and
ended up going with her to New York City. And
I had like six months off between finishing school in
Australia and going to MIT. So that's the six months
where I decided, you know, Maybe test tubes aren't the
way to go for me. Maybe there's something more exciting.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So she just saw you working security. I want to
see if I get this right. She's famous and rich
and talented and is a worldwide known performer. She sees
you working security and goes, I'll have that. And then
you just went with her?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Well, it was something like that. Well, I was doing
security at her concerts for a few nights. And I
was with a friend of mine who was my sparring partner, actually.
He was a karate guy, boxer, actually. And he kind
of liked her a.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Lot.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But she picked both of us to do security at
a nightclub. She was going out with her entourage, about
20 people or so. And we were there. And, you know,
she danced with him. And he was kind of hitting
on her. And we ended up back at her hotel.
There was like about 15 people in her. She had
a big suite. Like I'd never seen a big suite
(12:45):
before like that from the inside. And then people started leaving. And,
you know, at some point there was five people left
and my friend left. And then pretty soon it was
like Grace, me, and somebody else and her manager. And
I was starting to like realize, oh, shit, okay. I
kind of started to, I stood, understood what was going
(13:07):
on there. And I missed a few classes the next day,
but it was good, you know?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
When was the first time you came to America?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I was 18. I studied chemistry.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
So it was for that. That was the first time
you came?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That was before, yeah. This is when I was 24.
So 23. At 18, that was the first time I came.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
What did you think of the States?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I loved it from the first moment. Did you.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
You say MIT. So Boston?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Washington State. That's where I went the first time.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Up on the northwest. I was an exchange student. I
could be somebody else. Nobody knew me. I didn't have
to be this abused little kid that was in Sweden.
I just felt I loved it. And people were really
nice to me, and they were interested in me and
interested in Sweden, some weird country that they'd heard of.
(13:58):
Or Switzerland, whichever. They got it mixed up, but it
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, that's a good point. I do that too sometimes.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I'd like to apologize in retro because I've done that
a bunch of times in my life.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
And I've confused Switzerland and Sweden. I'd like to apologize.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Sweden has the Vikings, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Sweden has the Viking. Switzerland has the cocoa? The hot cocoa?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Oh. The watches.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.
And we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Did you have good English when you got here?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, not that good. I mean, you're studying in Sweden.
You learn, uh, you start studying English when you're about nine.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Or 10 in school, regular school.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And so I studied English and some German, little French. Uh,
so I had some knowledge, but, um, but it wasn't
so much about that. It was more about America being
a great power, felt very powerful and exciting. And there
were a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Did, was it, was, were people warmed you at it
when you were 18, when you got here, like this
country was warm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
They were pretty warm. I, uh, I was scared of
getting thrown out of, you know, as, as an exchange student, they,
everybody was smoking pot, you know, and like partying. And
I was, I was just studying. I was, uh, Somebody,
after a while, they dragged me into some concert, and
I smoked some weed, you know, and I kind of like, oh, shit,
you know, like, I'm going to get thrown out of here.
(15:32):
But I think people liked me, and I was like
the foreign student on that floor in the dorm.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did anyone know your martial arts background?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
By then, I was like a green belt or something.
I studied martial. um, take one to in America too.
I did some, took some classes and boxed. They, I
wasn't that, I wasn't that great at it. I mean,
it was, it was kind of upcoming. I hadn't won
any tournaments or anything.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Did people try to mess with you generally speaking? Cause
you're large, large, good looking guy.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
No, not really. I, I, I boxed.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
No, nobody in a bar would be like, Hey, good
looking guy from Sweden or Switzerland in Australia.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It happened. Really? Because in Australia, they drink more, you know, Australians, Aussies.
And I was doing security. So I was obviously, you know,
I'm the first guy who gets in the way of
some drunk guy who wants to fight. I mean, I'm
standing right on the door. So it did happen there.
And I was scared there, too, of getting thrown out
(16:39):
or hurting somebody and all that. So it wasn't a
lot of fun, that part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
At about 22 or 23, where did you think your
life was going to take you?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
22 and 23.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Because you have all these paths at that point that
it could have been.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I think I became a champion when I was 22.
I was studying engineering. I wanted to get to MIT,
my dad's favorite school. I was thinking of doing a PhD,
and I didn't think past that.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
So you didn't have 15 years from now dreams?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
No, no. I didn't have a girlfriend. I had never
really been with any girls. I had like performance anxiety.
I think for my dad.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
When you say been with girls, like had sex with girls?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, maybe I had a few times, but not a lot. No,
I was scared.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Oh, if I was you, I would have never. I'm 12.
I'm at it. I can't.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
No, that wasn't me.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Oh, I thought, yeah, because I didn't get it either,
but until I was like 20, I was a virgin
until I was 20, but it's because I was a loser.
If I was you.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Well, I was a loser in my head. My dad
told me I was a loser, so I thought I
was a loser. But I had this other side who
wanted to prove himself.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
That's so interesting. You had all these paths that you
could have gone. Yeah. And you still didn't really know
what you wanted to do. And life just kind of
interjected itself. Yeah. And you have a famous girlfriend. Does that...
does that do people then meet you because of her
(18:15):
and see things for you like did you meet anybody
in that that did that like hey I'm her friend
but I work in casting did that happen at all.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
No I think how it happened was I was I
would go out with Grace and people would notice me
and I I didn't realize it but I was we
were quite striking together because I was tall blonde I
had short hair and she had the same haircut she
was black girl, you know. So I met people like
(18:46):
Andy Warhol through her who put me in his magazine.
And then I would meet people in the business. She
was studying to be in Conan the Barbarian. It was
an Arnold's picture. So I went to an acting class.
And then I ended up for some reason doing a
scene in the class. And I did some modeling as
(19:07):
well to get a green card. I tried to get
a green card. Um, so I think people started noticing
me that way. And I started getting, I was a
little bit famous as a fighter in Europe and in Sweden,
but I started getting kind of exciting and excited about, um,
trying to express myself somehow because I'd used fighting to
(19:32):
feel better. And when I was just abused kid, now
I felt strong. And then I realized acting can kind
of do the same thing because you can express something and,
you feel better afterwards.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Did you, did, did you have the freedom inside of
you to act initially? Cause I know it can be
hard even if you're doing like the warmup exercises. they
can feel goofy. Did you feel comfortable doing that at first?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I felt pretty goofy. Yeah. I felt insecure. I, I,
I just, I was drawn to it. And the coach,
he's not with us anymore. Warren Robertson, he had a
lot of, had, To watch some big actors. And he
saw something in me, I think. And he said to
(20:15):
me at some point, well, maybe you're not a chemical engineer.
You know, maybe you're an artist. Because I'd done painting
when I was younger. I did music. I'd done some
acting as a young man, as a young kid, as
a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid. So he said, maybe you should,
you know, maybe you saw something in me that I
didn't see. So then I got a little more into it.
(20:35):
But I always felt awkward. Because I'm sort of a perfectionist,
and if I'm going to do something, say it's martial arts,
I want to learn it from the ground up. I
don't want to take my time. I don't want to
rush into things. But with acting, I didn't rush into it,
but it saw me, grabbed me. Show business got a
(21:00):
hold of me before I really knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Was there a magnificent feeling of confidence whenever you start
to get different people that you've just been introduced to,
but your whole life you didn't have it because of
your home situation.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
And all of a sudden people start to tell you, Hey,
you're actually good at this. I feel like that would
be like an introduction to some sort of like inner magnificence.
Did you feel that at all?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah. I felt that in martial arts because I won
those tournaments and people started, uh, want to hang out
with me. You know, I can meet some girls that way,
which I couldn't otherwise, uh, because I was engineer and
engineer and not too sexy, you know, um, But being
a martial arts champion was a bit cooler. And then
being with Grace, I was this kind of big, very
(21:47):
physically fit, kind of very innocent guy who didn't really
belong in New York nightlife. It was like, where does
this guy come from? He doesn't drink. He doesn't do drugs.
He runs at 5. When he comes home, it's 3 a.m.
He gets up at 5 a.m., goes for a run, says,
I stood out a bit. I think that's what they
(22:07):
kind of saw in me.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Was there a point that you had to commit to?
I'm now going to act. I'm in, even though right
now I don't have anything, but I'm going.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yes. What happened was I, I was with grace six
months and met all those people, Michael Jackson. Oh yeah.
And David Bowie and a few people like that. Yeah.
You know what I did actually was funny. Cause I was,
I took my kids when I was in London for
a movie many years ago, five years ago, for Aquaman.
(22:41):
I took them to the Motown. There's a Motown musical.
And the finale is the Motown 25th celebration. It was
at the famous theater uptown in Manhattan. What was it called?
The Apollo.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When Michael Jackson did the moonwalk for the first time. Well,
I was there with Grace, right? This is 1983 or
something like that. I was there and David Bowie was there.
So it was kind of a trip that I'm sitting
there with my kids. And I said, well, I was
there that night. And they were like, no, you weren't.
I guess. Wow. So I met all those people. And
(23:25):
then I had to go to MIT in the fall.
I had a scholarship, a Fulbright scholarship, and it was
quite hard to get. And because I was studying in Australia,
and I knew I had to graduate number one in
my class, and I got sick. I was fighting in
the tournament in the Australian Open, and I just barely
made it. I was like, I was, you know, we
(23:49):
had two. So Drew with his Hong Kong, the guy
from Hong Kong, we both kind of finished first at
the same grades. So I made it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Grades, not fight.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
No, no, he couldn't fight at all. Okay, good. Skinny
guy with glasses. Anyway, so I had to go to school,
and I took, so the funny part was that Grace said, well,
I'll come with you. So I had this big Yamaha motorcycle,
(24:19):
1200cc black. So I drove up to Boston. in my
Versace leather with Grace on the back and her leathers. And,
you know, they're waiting for this star student from Sweden
to arrive, right?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Chemistry star student, right?
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. In Sweden. So they're looking up for this kid,
you know, whatever they had in mind. They didn't imagine
this thing, this sort of equipage show up with Grace
on the back. And I think I realized it's not
for me anymore. And I, I was there for about
a month and I left less than a month.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
What was the first acting job that you were paid
to do?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It was paid to do. Um, I think I did
some commercials, commercials through a modeling agency, but what the
funny thing is I went out for a couple of movies.
One was a Rambo two, which was a Stallone picture.
There's a Russian character he fights at the end in
(25:22):
a helicopter. And they wanted me for that part. But
at the same time, I was auditioning for Rocky IV.
And so at some point, they realized, wait a second,
it's the same guy. So at some point, Stallone, I think,
made the call. So they paid me off for that
first role. So I made like five grand or something.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
That you didn't do.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I didn't do. And they hired somebody else. So I
got like five grand or something. It was like a
shitload of money for me. I thought, wow, this is great.
And then I think the first, well, no, I was
in a Bond movie. I didn't get paid. I was
in a Bond movie. Grace was in a Bond movie
with Roger Moore. And there was somebody who hadn't shown
(26:03):
up for work on set. So they're looking for some
big guy to play a Russian hitman or like a bodyguard.
And it's like, hey, what about you? And the director
comes to me and I'm like, no, I'd screw it up.
You know, I can't do it. no, don't worry, you
can do it. So they gave me a gun and said, oh,
you stay here, you know, pull out this gun and
(26:26):
point it at Christopher Walken who's up there, you know,
in the stands. And I did it. And I'm in
the credits way like two minutes down.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
But they do show you at the end.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
So I don't know if it's urban legend or not,
but whenever Rocky IV, which is the best Rocky ever,
in my opinion, which is the best because of you. Well,
Me saying that?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Some of it.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Me saying that? That there were like 5,000 people that
had auditioned for that movie?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
For that role? Did you know that?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, I didn't at first because when I showed up
at this cattle call where there's a girl sitting with
a table and, you know, they just said, how tall
are you? And I said, 6'4, 6'5, I think it
was at the time. And they're like, oh, you're too
tall next. You're too tall. Too tall.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
To box against him because of the juxtaposition of you two.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah. But I saw a small handwritten sign that said
Rocky IV. And I was like, shit, a Rocky movie.
I mean, I was a fighter. I loved the Rocky movies.
I'd seen all of them. So I managed through my
acting coach to get a chance to audition for it.
And I finally met Stallone because they tracked me down.
And I was in Europe with Grace. Flew me back,
(27:40):
and I met him at Paramount here in L.A., and
he said, I've got 5,000 guys up for this role.
And then it's like, well, you've got to put on
some weight, you know, because I was kind of skinny.
I'd done mostly running and fighting, and fighters can be
quite skinny, you know, just big legs. So we did that.
(28:00):
We took some pictures in, like, boxing gear, and then
I realized I was up against a bunch of other guys.
So I had to practice more. a monologue, and then
do a screen test, which was about four months later
after I put on some weight. So I had to
do a screen test, classic old Hollywood style. They flew
me back from New York. I was here in a
(28:21):
cheap hotel somewhere, and I go down, and I haven't
eaten for like a number of days because I want
to be ripped, right? So we go down for a
cup of coffee, and the elevator's open, and there's a
six-foot-five blonde guy, some Russian guy, excuse me, and I'm like, Oh, shit.
And then so another one down there, big blonde Russian guy.
(28:41):
It's like, oh, shit. Okay. I thought I was the
only one, but I realized I'm up against the two
other guys, you know. So then we did our, we
had to put on boxing trunks, no shirt. We're standing
there in front of the camera. They got like a
dolly track coming in like this. And there's like 50
(29:03):
people behind the camera, a bunch of guys in suits,
Stallone and his bodyguards. And I'm like, oh, shit, here
we go. This is it. And then the thing is,
I'd practiced this monologue with my coach in New York.
And he said, you know, all of these Rocky villains,
they're very loud, you know, like Mr. T and Apollo Creed.
I will teach you a lesson. You know, so I'm
(29:25):
coming for you. I'm coming for you. So little Muhammad Ali, right? So.
He said, you know, you should play it very internal.
When the camera's rolling, don't move a muscle. You stay
very still and just say the dialogue, you know, speaking.
it through the eyes, you know. So, of course, he's
quite powerful in film, that kind of performance. He was smart,
(29:46):
so I did that. The other two Russian guys were
like a Russian Mr. T. I will crush you. I
will break you. And, of course, the next day Stallone
calls me. There you go, the part kids. I got it.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
The Bobbycast. We'll be right back. This is The Bobbycast.
How was your Russian accent?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It wasn't that great at the beginning, but then I
had a Russian coach for the movie, and he was
very smart. He had defected from the Soviet Union, and
he knew everything about how they took kids away from
their parents to become, because they saw, okay, this young
boy could be a great fighter. They say, test your muscles. Okay,
(30:38):
we're going to take them away from their parents and
put them in a camp, right? So they're all kind of,
they're not exactly fans of the system. So he kind
of designed my character a little bit like that. You know,
I fight for myself, like, you know. So he was
very helpful with the action. He was helpful with everything.
But I think in the screen test, I probably had
(30:59):
like a Swedish accent or something.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Another one of the urban legends that you can verify
or not is that you actually hit Stallone and put
him in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, we both get hit quite a bit. You can't
shoot like a 15-round fight in those days. There's no CGI.
Everything is in camera. Everything has to be flying out
of your mouth, the blood, everything. There's no way to
do that without getting hit. And we practiced for five months,
but You know, he wanted me to hit him to
the body really hard. And then we have those head shots.
(31:32):
So we both got hit. But I think what hurt him,
and I didn't know about this, was there was something
to the– he got hit in the heart somehow. And
I think he had some minor heart attack or something.
I read somewhere they had– I was told later they
had to fly him low altitude down from Vancouver. And
he was in a hospital here for a while. But
(31:54):
I just got two weeks off. I was happy, you
know what I mean? I realized, oh, shit, slice hurt.
And I'm like, oh, sorry. But he hit me a lot, too. But,
you know, I could take it. I was used to
the real thing.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
When you're shooting that movie specifically, did you know it
was going to be as great as it ended up being?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
No, I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
The first time you saw it, did you know it
was great?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yes. I went to the premiere. I had not seen
it because I wasn't involved in the editing or anything.
I went to the premiere and, you know, we pulled
up at Westwood. Grace looking fabulous in a big hat.
You know, people aren't looking at me. It's like they
want to take pictures of Grace and kind of shoo
me out of the way. And we go in there
(32:41):
and the lights go down and there's these two boxing gloves,
you know, Soviet. And then the movie starts. And I think.
And I come on pretty soon. I come on after
maybe five minutes. And I remember I was just sitting
there staring like, I was just, it was such a
(33:04):
good movie. I mean, Stallone had directed it, the music,
James Brown, all those tracks, the montages, and the Soviet-U.S.
kind of rivalry. There was a nuclear standoff going in
the real world. So it was like, it's a big deal.
And I was totally shocked. So when the lights come out,
(33:24):
And I kind of realized everybody's looking at me now.
And I was like, oh, shit, you know. It was like,
what happened? And we came out, and people were taking
pictures of me. And when they asked, interview me instead
of Grace. And so it kind of flipped in 90
minutes like that.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
On the way into the premiere, they wanted to talk
to her. On the way out, it was you. Yeah, literally.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
And it took me like, I think it took me
five years to recover from that. Yeah. Because I hadn't been,
it wasn't like I'd started acting for 10 years and, oh,
I want to be a star. And I wasn't ready
for it. You know, I was just like shocked, kind
of like blindsided, I would say.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Was it odd that everyone thought you were Russian?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Well, it wasn't odd because I did a pretty good
job portraying a Russian. But it was, yes, some people
still think I'm Russian. But I didn't really care much
about that, I think. I understood it. Um, but I mean,
I was a little, I mean, I wanted to try
(34:29):
to do other types of roles. So, I mean, uh,
the next role, which was meant a lot of pressure
for me was playing.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
He man, because I was love that one.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Well, that's because it's like a kind of American hero
or let's say a kid's hero. And I went from
this Soviet, you know, villain and somehow now I had
to be hero. And I felt a lot of pressure
to do that, you know? Um, And I was actually,
and I didn't have Stallone any longer to look after me.
And he was very smart and very helpful. He could say, no,
(35:00):
don't do it that way. You know, don't move too fast.
You know, like he's, you know, obviously he knows everything
about how to start an action movie. So he taught
me that stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I loved He-Man. I thought you were great.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, I was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, no, I didn't even have trouble going, oh, that's
the Russian. There wasn't to me. And again, I was
a kid, but I never, did you worry about being typecast?
Because I didn't feel like you were whenever you went
to that movie.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
No, I didn't. I've worried about it a little bit,
I guess. I think what it was, was I wasn't
really smart enough to hire the right people around me.
Like Arnold, for instance, a good friend of mine, he's
a very clever businessman and he already knew, okay, I
got to get this agent and I want to get
this guy and I have to, really think about my choices,
(35:52):
I was a little more like, oh, this is great.
I'm famous and I can be in the movies. And,
you know, oh, this guy seems to like me. I'll
take his advice. But I think as an actor, I
felt I liked that role. It was a sweet movie.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
The cameo in the latest one?
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Like, I don't have a question. That was just fun.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah. The.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
When you went back to Creed II?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I loved that role for you. How did you feel
about going back to play that same person? Obviously, it
was your kid at that point. How did you feel
about going back to play the same character?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I didn't want to do it at first. I didn't
like the script. It was kind of, the script was
a little racist in the first one, the first draft
I read. Towards? Towards Creed, towards Adonis Creed. And Mike,
the Russians in that script were kind of, they were,
(36:51):
they were not, they were racist towards, you know, the African-Americans.
And I didn't like that too much. So, you know,
but then what happened, funny enough, they ended up hiring
a Stephen Caple Jr. Who is African-American to direct the picture.
And then he rewrote it and he wrote a really
good script. That was so good. I remember reading the
(37:12):
script and it was like, wow. I mean, He wrote
this father-son relationship in there, you know, like I had
my dad. So now I got to play my dad against,
you know, against somebody who was not very nice to
his son. So it was kind of cool. I got
to relive that.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Do Russians ever think you're Russian?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
No, they don't. But they kind of adopted me a
little bit like their own little movie star or big
movie star because they don't really have any famous actors.
Even before this whole war with Ukraine and everything, I've
been to Russia a few times. And they like a
lot of other movies I've done, not just Rocky IV.
But I think when the Soviet Union fell apart, well,
(37:59):
right before, you weren't allowed to watch Western pictures. But
they smuggled movies in, like action movies, like my movies, Stallone's, Arnold's.
So a lot of those people, they know America through
these movies.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yakov Smirnoff. You know who that is?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Who?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yakov Smirnoff. Who is he? The Russian comedian?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
No.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
In Soviet Russia, you don't drive a car, cars drive you? No?
Speaker 1 (38:24):
No. Okay. Yeah, I heard some stories about that.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
He was like an 80s comedian. I remember him saying
stuff like that. But yeah, so not a big Yakov fan,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
No, but it sounds funny. Yeah, it's the one about
when Reagan told a story when they have to order
a car 20 years... like five years in advance or something,
or ten years in advance, they have to pay the deposit,
and then they get the car, because, you know, the
Soviet production is all centralized. So you get it five
(38:57):
years later. And then he goes, he pays his deposit,
and then he says, okay, we will deliver the car,
we will deliver the car, and it should have been
in the afternoon or the morning. And the guy goes...
This is five years from now. Who cares? He says, well,
(39:20):
I have to know because the plumber comes in the
afternoon or something like that. I didn't tell it right,
but it was anyway the way it used to be.
Like you have to wait for everything. Five years.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Did your dad see your success i'm not sure if
or when he died uh.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
2000 yeah he saw it and he was you know
by then he was a very kind of an older
uh bit uh you know i would say a bit
confused and and He saw it and he appreciated it.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Did you guys have a relationship?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, we did. I forgave him. I realized that he
had been mistreated when he was a kid. He grew
up during the Depression in Northern Sweden where people starved
to death. I don't know what happened to him, but
I'm sure he got beaten too.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Looking back at how disciplined you were, just generally speaking,
because for your school, for your fighting, for all things,
I feel like discipline was a through line in your
life are you proud that you had that discipline or
do you wish possibly you wouldn't have been as.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Disciplined no i guess i'm proud to have it because
i had also had a lot of trauma and other
things that could have like torn me apart and uh
could have destroyed me i mean self-destruction myself i was
very self-destructive at some point i mean not just with
alcohol and drugs and things but also with you know
(40:46):
stunts crazy sparring sessions, working too much, traveling too much, just,
you know, kind of, it's called escape behavior. When you
have a trauma, say you're PTSD, say you're a soldier
from Iraq, you come home and you've lived in fear
of your life for, say, a year. Well, it doesn't
(41:07):
just go away. And you try to get rid of it,
but it's inside you. Escape behavior, alcohol, drugs, sexual affairs,
I mean, all of those things. So I think the
discipline kept me kind of kept me together.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
I grew up as a poverty child, but I had
people because I didn't have a dad at all, but
I had people that stepped in. Like my high school
football coach helped a lot. Like it was a positive influence.
My youth director at church was a positive influence. Did
you have anyone that you look back at that you're
grateful that they existed in that time where you were
getting abused that you go, I'm so glad that they
(41:45):
were there to at least give me some sort of stability?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh yeah, for sure. While I was abused, not really.
I didn't have anybody. I was too little. I was
kind of isolated. My mom was, she was also abused.
So she was beaten. So she didn't tell me, but
As I got older, I had my karate instructor, I
would say, later my acting coach. And I've had other
(42:12):
people like that who I've looked up to, especially my
karate instructor, because I started with him when I was 15.
So I was just on that edge where my dad,
you know, at some point I started growing and he's like,
I'm going to end up in a fight with this kid,
you know, got to get him out of here. So
he sent me to his parents, to my grandparents. So
(42:32):
I was way in northern Sweden. And that's when I
started doing sports and I started doing martial arts and
things like that.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Did you ever get into therapy?
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Oh, yeah. Therapy. Not early on. I wish I would
have done it earlier, but it was not until I
was about 50. I started. And it changed my life.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Same for me. I was older, too, when I got in.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
How did it change your life?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Well, I became aware of what had happened to me,
and I found a way through that. I realized I
didn't have to act out, because otherwise you're acting out.
You may be in a relationship with a person, say
a woman, but you're acting out from something that happened
40 years ago. It had nothing to do with this person.
(43:23):
And I got control of that, and I ended up
not abusing myself, not doing crazy stuff, not drinking so much,
not doing as many crazy stunts, being more careful of
how I treated myself.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Was there ever a point you felt like you didn't
have to prove yourself to anybody anymore?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah. I think I still have that sort of ambition
to prove things to myself, I would say, if I
can do something. But I feel less... I think lately
in the last 10 years I've gotten, since the cancer,
I've gotten more just happy to be around, happy to,
you know, for what I've accomplished. And I can be
a little more kind to myself and kind of congratulate
(44:05):
myself for what I did.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
What was your cancer journey?
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, I got kidney cancer when I was, well, it's
10 years ago and 11 years ago. I was diagnosed,
had surgery. I was declared cancer free. Then I came
back and then I had to go through a lot
of different therapies, and I was misdiagnosed, actually. And finally,
things weren't looking too good, which is one reason I
(44:32):
decided to do the doc, because I didn't know if
I was going to be around, you know, for the premiere.
So I got this new doctor at UCLA who somebody
had recommended, and she told me I'd been misdiagnosed. I
had this unique form of mutation of kidney cancer that
there's a lot of medications against. And I got a
(44:52):
new medication, and within like a few weeks, everything was reversed.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
No way.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
And then they removed all these tumors, and they were
all gone. Within like one year, everything was gone. And
then I had to go through some treatments after that.
But yeah, so it's kind of like a movie, one
of my movies, miraculous.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
What are your feelings towards the doctors who misdiagnosed you?
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I wasn't too happy with it at the time. I
was thinking of taking some legal action. But then I realized,
first of all, it's a lot of work. You can't
make that much money. I was going to give it
to a charity. And I thought maybe, you know, I
don't hold grudges. But I'm sure that guy probably, if
he knows what happened to me, I'm sure he's going
(45:41):
to feel a bit sorry that maybe he feels disappointed
in himself and maybe glad that I made it.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Wow. And did you physically feel it once they corrected it?
Could you physically feel you starting to feel better and
be better?
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But when it was over, that's when
it really hit me because it's the shock to the
system when you, it's like my therapist, I have like
a cancer survivorship therapist. She says, you know, most people
swim on the surface, but when you've been down and
you touch the bottom of the pool and you come
back up, you're never the same again. And I think, yeah,
(46:21):
it took me two years to get back in shape
when it was over.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
What do you want people to take from your book?
Because you speak so authentically and open and honest, even
just the 45 minutes we've done this. Your book is
very much a lot of that as well. So what
do you want people to take from it after they
read it?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I think, hopefully, they can maybe, hopefully some inspiration and
maybe they can also draw some, maybe learn something from
it or, uh, maybe they can use it as some
kind of guidance if they have their own problems and
(46:59):
how usually persistence pays off, you know, and that you don't,
you can, you have to believe in yourself. You got
to keep going, you know, no matter what happens and, uh,
and take some chances and be, be good to yourself.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
What about your legacy? What do you want it to be?
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Um, Well, I think the most important thing is that
people speak well about you after you're gone. That you
were a good person. That you added, like somebody said,
you gave more than you took. You loved more than
you would love. I think to give more than you're getting,
(47:39):
that's important. That you don't try to keep some kind
of balance. It's better to give more than you receive.
I think... My legacy, I guess, is a bit as
an athlete, a bit as an actor, and I suppose
(47:59):
as a man, somebody who has overcome a lot of
problems and issues. I probably have a few more coming.
Hopefully not too many, but I think that's what it's about.
Never to give up.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Two final things. Did you ever memorize the periodic table? No.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I had to do it in school, yeah, but I
don't know if I remember it.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
That's pretty baller. That's pretty baller. That you knew the
whole periodic table?
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah. Now they've added some elements. What is it, 105
before or something?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah, that's dumb. It's like when they take planets away
and give us planets again. It's like, let's just settle
on that.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
There's a system to it, you know, because the elements
are related. You know, when you go down this way,
they're all similar elements. When you go downwards this way.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
My final question. You have every ability to say no,
mostly because you can beat me up still. I'm in
a cardigan. I'm light work for you at this point. Yeah,
whatever you want to do. So that camera right there,
if you looked at it, yeah, and you said Bobby Bones,
if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
That one? That one. Bobby Bones, if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Now I literally can't die that that's happened. I hope
that whatever your fulfillment is with writing this book, I
hope it meets you. yeah if it's selling a bunch
if it's changing lives i think about that police officer
story that you told like that made the hairs on
my neck stand up because you may have never met
that guy ever and you still affected him in a
(49:32):
way that helped his life and i hope this book
does that for people as well and i it's super
cool to spend time with you so i'm so grateful
that you stopped by i've been a fan for a
long time like i loved the original he-man like it
was It was A +. It was awesome. And Rocky
IV is the best Rocky for sure. And yeah, I
hope you sell 10 million of these. So there he is,
(49:53):
the great Dolph Lundgren. Here it is, Fights Worth Fighting.
Everybody go buy two copies. Buy two and gift one
to somebody. Thank you, Dolph.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Thanks for listening to a BobbyCast production.
Host
Bobby Bones
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