Celebrity News July 29, 2024
Kevin Hart Roasts The Rock While Talking 'Borderlands' Training (Exclusive)
Kevin Hart is jacked and ready to play a rough and tough mercenary in his new sci-fi action flick "Borderlands."
“Extra” spoke with Kevin and his co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Édgar Ramírez and Florian Munteanu and director Eli Roth about the movie at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con.
Hart muscled his way through the training... without any help from his frenemy Dwayne "The Rock"Johnson!
Hart joked, “I didn't have that chump help me at all. That low-grade, low-level action guy. I needed the real deal, the real stuff.”
Instead, Kevin turned to some Navy SEALs for the heavy lifting.
He shared, “Did a lot of test-battle stuff. Put me in the field, no real concept of what was gonna happen. Just a boom, and there I was. Just had to get on."
Kevin's kids got to visit set to watch him work, and he said, "My kids showed up ready, first scene. That's how I got to know what I was doing, if it was real, if I was in there in the nitty-gritty."
“Borderlands,” based on the billion-dollar global smash video game series, centers on Cate Blanchett as an infamous outlaw and a team of misfit heroes, including Kevin and Jamie, who must protect a powerful girl played by Ariana Greenblatt.
Jamie isn’t just celebrating the movie, she’s also basking in the glow of her Emmy nomination for playing Jeremy Allen White’s mom on “The Bear" — her first Emmy nomination in 26 years!
She commented, “It's beyond, I can't even... You'll make me cry right here right now. I'm just having an extraordinary experience.”
Jamie also raved of the "Borderlands" cast, "We are such a multinational crew of actors, it's really kind of amazing. We've all become really close. So, we all live all over the world. I mean, Cate is in England, everybody's everywhere else, yet we're all here in this sort of really groovy group, and it really translated into the movie screen and very much behind the scenes."
Édgar dished on developing his villain character Atlas, sharing, "I think that I had the most freedom because it was a character that was created for the movie. The whole Atlas Corporation gets distilled in this character with which I had so much fun because we basically made it up."
He recalled his first day of filming, "They spent, I think, almost four months together before I came for the last part. All my scenes were put toward the end so that I could be part of the fun. And I remember my first scene was with the entire cast, 200 extras, and I'm like getting out of my space ship and saying this and that and that. It was after a year and a half of COVID that we were all locked up in our homes, so that was, that was... The only reason it was not as intimidating as it would be in other circumstances is because of the beautiful chemistry that we had."
Édgar praised Jamie, gushing, “She was the mother and the one putting everyone together, making everyone feel welcome.”
Eli said of the experience, “It was an insane fun, functional, dysfunctional family. It's kind of like being a camp counselor in an insane asylum but you're also one of the patients.”
In the movie, Florian plays a bodyguard, and he loved filming those action scenes!
Florian shared, “I just couldn't wait to swing that ax and give the people what they want: brutality, ferocity, blood!”
"Borderlands" is in theaters August 9.