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Tom Rhys Harries, the lead of the DC movie as Matt Hagen, recalls the scene where he thought his knee might give out.
Key Points
- Tom Rhys Harries describes filming Clayface with a torn ACL.
- “I hadn’t told the stunts or anyone on production,” the actor tells EW.
- Harries recalls the scene where he thought, “I don’t know if my knee’s gonna give out.”
There’s a reason why Tom Rhys Harries, the lead of DC’s Clayface movie, shambles out of a scene as if injured.
“I actually shot all of Clayface with a torn ACL,” the actor tells Entertainment Weekly for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con Preview cover story. “I hadn’t told the stunts or anyone on production.”
The scene involves Harries’ Matt Hagen, a promising actor in Gotham, attending a premiere. To heal his mutilated face after a mob boss carved him up, Matt undergoes an experimental procedure involving a mysterious serum. It appears to have worked, and he wants to hit the town in a very public way.
However, a monstrous transformation begins to take hold. Matt is forced to flee the event once his face starts melting.
“I was hobbling because I was like, ‘I don’t know if my knee’s gonna give out,’” Harries recalls of shooting that scene. “I was running around Liverpool at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. trying to get away with it.”
Harries maintains an active lifestyle. He motorbikes (“I ride as much as I can,” he says), he enjoys being in nature, and he used to surf and play football. Before the Clayface shoot, “I had to have surgery on an ACL that I did in,” he shares. “If you ever get the opportunity to tear your ACL, I recommend you don’t take up that opportunity. It’s pretty gnarly.”
The sequence in the film involving Matt running away from a premiere continues with the character gazing horrified upon his oozing complexion in the reflection of a storefront window. Completely disoriented, he steps back onto the road and gets hit by the side of a car.
“They were like, ‘Alright! So we’re gonna do this in camera. Are you ready? The car’s not gonna hit you too fast,’” Harries recalls. “I had to say to the stunt coordinator, ‘That action is the worst thing you could do to bust it up.’ But we got away with it! And my knee’s still intact.”
Clayface also stars Naomi Ackie as Dr. Caitlyn Corr, the scientist who injects Matt with the serum. Embracing the body-horror subgenre, the film tells the origin story of the titular shapeshifting Batman villain, set before the Clayface appearance on HBO Max’s animated Creature Commandos series.
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Max Minghella of Industry features prominently as a Gotham PD detective, John Pearlman.
Directed by James Watkins, Clayface opens in theaters this Oct. 23. Read more about the production in EW’s cover story.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
