Dolph Lundgren Caused Tension in ‘Rocky IV’ by Staying in Character as Ivan Drago
Sylvester Stallone cast Dolph Lundgren in his breakthrough role as the Rocky IV heavy-hitter Ivan Drago. Lundgren excelled at the iconic character, but not only because he looked the part. It turns out that Lundgren exercised a bit of method acting while playing the Italian stallion’s arch-nemesis. However, he couldn’t help but rub people the wrong way in the process.
Dolph Lundgren felt his ‘Rocky IV’ co-star didn’t like him at first
Lundgren put a lot of thought into playing Ivan Drago, which was what truly clinched him the part. Aside from his imposing presence and unique look, Lundgren did some creative research in order to believably portray the Russian boxer.
“For the the screen test I had to do to get the part, I decided to keep him very still, because I had seen pictures of these Soviet cadets where they always stand chin up like this,” Lundgren once told Screen Crush.
Lundgren’s very calm approach to Drago was what helped him beat out his competition in the end.
“There were three guys left for the screen test: Two Russians and me. And the other two Russians were yelling like a Russian Mr. T. ‘I must break you! I will kick your a***!’ Very loud — and then I cam on, [quietly] ‘My name is Drago.’ And of course, Sly is not stupid, he saw that was good,” Lundgren added.
But it looks like Lundgren’s deep dive into the character didn’t end after auditioning. In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Lundgren asserted that he remained in character for a good chunk of filming. This wasn’t a problem for Stallone, who’d signed off on casting Lundgren and already knew him very well. But Carl Weathers wasn’t as familiar with The Expendables star. It didn’t help that the late Weathers might’ve questioned Lundgren’s acting abilities when they first met.
“I was in character a lot around the ring, so I was always Drago. I was walking around like him. In the beginning, we didn’t talk much. There was a little bit of tension there, and then of course in the fight, I ended up beating him up pretty badly. I didn’t really get to know him that well,” Lundgren recalled.
But the tension between the two didn’t last long.
“But later at the premiere of the movie and then later, professionally, I met him many times… We did a couple of Comic-Cons together, and he turned out to be a really nice guy who was very friendly. But I think he was always a little bit sore about what happened in Rocky I through IV. I didn’t write the script,” Lundgren said.
Why people thought Dolph Lundgren hit Carl Weathers for real during their iconic ‘Rocky IV’ scene
Weathers put just as much thought into his own Rocky IV performance as Lundgren did in his. In one of the franchise’s memorable scenes, Lundgren’s Drago delivers a devastating blow to Weathers’ Apollo Creed, killing the character off. But Weathers made sure Creed went out with a bang, doing a lot of research leading up to the shot. His death scene was so iconic that it managed to trick real medical professionals who saw the film.
“It’s when Apollo Creed twitches on the ground after the fight,” Weathers once told The Hollywood Reporter. “If you’re going to lose Apollo Creed, it better be a loss that you really feel. Doctors [on set in case of accidental real injury] and people filming thought that I had been actually hit on that one. It worked so perfect to book-end the life of Apollo Creed — a man who in the very beginning comes into do this as a lark … and in the end, a guy who has already left, but there is still that fighter in him and that muscle memory in him where he is still trying to move, and it’s gone.”
