Luke Hemsworth Discusses ''Gunner'' and His Action-Packed Role

Hey, I'm Alison with FlickDirect, and I am here with Luke Hemsworth to talk about Gunner. Hello, how are you? Hi, Alison, how are you? I'm doing very well, thank you. Why did you want to play Gunner? Why did I want to play Gunner? That's, well, that's, I mean, well, Morgan Freeman was on board for its first start, as that was probably a very big part of it.

You know, the legend, the man, the myth, what an awesome human being he is. And then, you know, I grew up with these types of films, you know, taken, you know, he was very MacGyver-esque, actually, I think a little more in the script than he ended up being due to all the things that happened on these films. But I loved his ability to, you know... You know, to use his surroundings, to use his experience, to manipulate situations so that he came out on top.

He was a very resourceful man. Yes. Quite. But I think also the reason he was doing it was very interesting, too. I'm a father, he's a father. The question is, what lengths do you go to to protect your family, to rescue your family? I mean, so that, you know, that resonated quite heavily with me and was a big part for doing it. But yeah, you know, I'm not, it's not like I'm turning heaps of things down.

Like, you know, the script comes along and I'm like, sign me up, let's go. I need to talk about that scene in the pickup truck with Morgan Freeman, because it was great. What was it like filming that scene? It was so good. He was, he's so great. He's such, you know, he's such a wonderful actor. And most of the time, I'm sort of a little bit deer in the headlights, just going, that's so cool what he's doing.

I love it. I think he got a little bit sick of me geeking out and fanboying on all his previous films. How do you not, though? How do you not? There's so many. But, but, but yeah, he, he, you know. You know, he was, he was very, very giving and very, very loving towards me, which was, which was a great relief. Well, like I said, it was a great scene.

I can't wait for everyone to see that scene. Dimitri said that you had a lot of physicality to you, which he was surprised when, and you did a lot of your own stunts. But how much, how physical and how much tactical training did you have to go through to get prepared for this role? I was very, very lucky because I have a whole bunch of physical and tactical training on the previous film.

And what happened on the prep for this was I broke my ankle. I broke it quite, quite bad, badly. And I had to have surgery and pin it back together. And so we actually, I think we actually ended up postponing the shoot by about four weeks to get me, get me basically walking and running. I think I had about six or seven weeks from surgery. To when we started shooting.

And I went, I went to a surgeon in Australia who had, who does all the rugby players. And she was like, you'll be fine. We have guys, we have guys bigger than you who were running back on the field in six weeks. And, and she was right. She did an amazing job and tentatively at first. But by the end I was, you know, I was, I was able to do everything, which I was very, very thankful for.

And, you know, you're being nurtured by this amazing stunt team who, who make everything look far better than it was. Than it is in real life. So I just, I just had to try and keep up with them. And they were very, very, very, very, very giving. And yeah, it came off all right, I think. All right. We're going to call you the new Tom Cruise. You break your ankle, you just keep going. Keep going. Just keep going. Keep going.