Conor McGregor and Jake Gyllenhaal got into some method acting by mistake on the set of the “Road House” remake.
Gyllenhaal and McGregor co-star in the reimagining of the 1989 action movie. Gyllenhaal stars as a former UFC middleweight who comes to blows with various antagonists, including one portrayed by McGregor in his feature film debut. Gyllenhaal revealed this week that McGregor caught him with an errant punch while choreographing one of several fight scenes between them.
“We had, actually, by mistake, he clocked me in the face,” Gyllenhaal told “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon. “We would do a take where we were like fighting, and fake fighting, fake fighting, and then we’d go watch the monitor to see it back, to see what worked, and he was always great with me. He would show me, tell me to do things, and like, ‘Oh, you know, turn your head, move a little bit more this way to try and make it look more real,’ and it was late because we shot a lot of these fight scenes at night.
“So it was like 3 a.m., and he was talking to me really close, and he was like, ‘Yeah, like that left hook looks good, but then when you do it like, boom [showing fake punch],’ and he hit me by mistake. It was almost like … and I was like, ‘Oh!’ And he was like, ‘Oh!'”
Gyllenhaal was admittedly nervous about working with the former two-division UFC champion.
“When I got word that he was going to be doing it, I was super psyched, because they chased him for a long time to play the part,” Gyllenhaal said. “But then I got totally terrified and I thought, ‘Oh God, I actually have to fake fight this guy and I got to look like I can.’
“I stay in pretty good shape, but we trained for two months pretty hard — grappling, and a lot of MMA.”
The “Road House” remake debuted at SXSW on March 8 ahead of its March 21 premiere on Amazon Prime Video.