Chris Meloni Once Almost Shot His Stunt Double in ‘Man of Steel’
Actor Chris Meloni almost had a slight mishap when he worked on the set of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. He remembered things almost went horribly wrong between him and a stunt double after he trained for the superhero feature.
Chris Meloni once revealed this ‘Man of Steel’ behind-the-scenes mishap
Meloni played military veteran Nathan Hardy in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The nature of the role required Meloni to expand his knowledge on a few things to add authenticity to his performance. One of the hobbies he learned was how to fly a helicopter the way a soldier would. Meloni asserted that the process was like learning a real superpower.
“I think part of the whole superhero ethos or fantasy is these special powers put you outside the boundaries of the norm, to be able to say, ‘I want to go to Missouri, right now.’ Well, there you go,” Meloni once told Vulture. “You have that within your ability. But all the work and study that’s needed to become proficient and safe and good at flying, and understanding the system, I feel like that’s giving me superpowers, because that’s me using my brain again.”
Playing a war veteran also required Meloni to engage in weapons training. He had a stunt double to practice with. But there was a moment where his use of the gun went horribly wrong.
“We did some weapons training — shooting guns, making transitions from one weapon to another,” Meloni said. “I just had to make sure I didn’t shoot my stunt guy that was sitting next to me — which I almost did. I pulled out the weapon one time, and it went off. It was loaded with blanks and exploded out, and it put a hole in the seat. They were cheap seats, come on! And I didn’t hit him. He’s a stunt guy, stop crying! Come on!”
Chris Meloni once shared the best piece of direction he’d gotten was on ‘Man of Steel’
Meloni has worked with several directors over the span of his career. But his collaboration with Snyder on Man of Steel stood out because of one sequence. The Law & Order star delivered what some consider the movie’s most memorable line. But it was a line that took several takes to deliver correctly.
“But one of the longest, nicest dances I’ve ever had with a director was with Zack Snyder when I did Man of Steel. My last line of the movie was ‘A good death is its own reward.’ I was parroting the line the alien being had said to me before she was going to kill me, and now I was going to kill her. I saw it one way, and Zack just thought it should go another way. And I was fine with that. I must have done 50 takes,” Meloni once told Esquire.
Meloni also asserted that he harbored no such ill will towards Snyder for the redundant experience.
“Number one, I appreciated his honesty. And number two, I appreciated that he had the patience to let us both explore. I didn’t feel bad—I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m not getting this.’ I just felt like, ‘Let me play with this.’ It was a really nice moment to do. But, of course, you can’t do that with every actor in every moment in every movie, or you’d never get the movie shot,” Meloni said.
In the end, Meloni ended up feeling just okay with the take. But he seemed to appreciate the actual experience of the process more than the line delivery.
“For me, it was more of a journey. Like, ‘This is what I thought this last moment meant.’ But Zack thought the last line had value in meaning something else,” Meloni added. “And it’s absolutely nothing any normal person would see or feel or understand. It takes two nuts—Zack Snyder and myself—to understand what we were doing. I’m sure the crew was like, ‘Oh my God, please move on.’ It’s one of those great neurotic, creative, artistic moments.”
