Exclusive Expendables Interview: Randy Couture
Mar 27, 2010 - 30ninjas.com
Hardcore Army and UFC Veteran, Is Pounding Down Hollywood’s Door
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30 NINJAS: Can you tell me a little bit about your character Toll Road in
Stallone’s upcoming film The Expendables? What’s his story?
RANDY COUTURE: Toll Road is one of the Expendables; he’s one of the team’
s mercenaries whose specialty is hand-to-hand combat, and he tends to find
himself in those types of situations. He’s also dealing with some of the
things that he’s had to do through the course of his chosen profession, and
he’s using a psychologist to come to terms with the person that he is. In
a lot of situations, he’s kind of the quiet guy, the intellectual,
college-educated guy who realizes the things that they do aren’t really normal.
So he has to come to terms with this.
30 NINJAS: You’ve said in other interviews that there was a great chemistry
on the set of The Expendables and that Stallone was great to work with.
Can you tell me what was different about working on this movie compared
to other movies that you’ve worked on?
RC: Well, aside from kind of the up energy on the set when all the Expendables
came together because of the group of guys, there was also Sly, first of all
having written the script and doing all the rewrites, plus directing the movie.
He’s behind the camera, running in a lot of cases three units to capture
everything he wanted to capture, plus he’s in front of the camera as a star,
the lead guy in the movie. I know from my experience in just the nine weeks
in New Orleans alone that it was a grind. It was remarkable; I had no idea
how he was still standing after all of that, but I found him to be very
refreshing. He wasn’t caught up with the words on the page; things changed
on the fly ? he rewrote stuff right there on the set a lot of the time, changing
around the lines for characters to make it fit better, feel better, and he
was very, very in tune with helping the actors get across what he wanted to
get across. Not just me; I saw him work with a lot of the guys, and obviously
he’s very ? I think because of the characters that he’s played, people assume
he’s ? but actually he’s a very, very bright guy.
