Conor McGregor’s film debut leaves little to the imagination — and he’s not afraid to joke about it!
The MMA fighter, 35, spoke with PEOPLE at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas on Friday, and described his hope that his nude scene in Road House crosses over. “I just hope my mother is okay with it,” he jokes. – I didn’t tell her, I couldn’t tell her.
“I said to myself, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger got into the movie business in a similar way when he stood on things in Terminator,’ so that gave me some confidence,” McGregor adds. “I thought, ‘I’m going to do it. I have nothing against it.’ I think it will be a shock to people.”
The remake of the 1989 film of the same name — which premiered at a festival in Texas last weekend and arrives on Prime Video on March 21 — had star Jake Gyllenhaal follow quite the workout and diet routine to get in tip-top shape for the role.
As for McGregor, he explains that one scene had a particular personal request: channeling his “free spirit.”
“I just started just going naked and walking down the street — that was it,” he tells PEOPLE. “I just did it. I’m a free spirit. I was in good shape, so I have no problem with it.”
The filmmaking process as a whole, he says, was ultimately “hard work” for a professional athlete. “I was taken aback by how difficult it was and had a deep respect for the craft,” he explains.
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Conor McGregor attends the premiere of ‘Road House’ during SXSW on March 8.
Astrid Valigorsky/Getty
Jake Gyllenhaal looks exhausted in new shirtless photos with Road House set
McGregor’s comments come after Gyllenhaal also spoke to PEOPLE about his work in the Road House, in which he plays Elwood Dalton — a former UFC fighter who becomes a bouncer at a bar in the Florida Keys. Jessica Williams, Post Malone and Daniela Melchior also appear in the film, which originally starred the late Patrick Swayze in 1989.
As Gyllenhaal explained, preparing for Road House “took a village”.
“I will tell you that I am where I am — 10 years ago I did it myself Southerner, which is another fight movie, and I was in second place. My body was, I knew I needed help with nutrition and I knew I needed to protect myself from injury, and I also needed to be able to have the aesthetic of the whole role,” Gyllenhaal told PEOPLE.
“Balancing all of that required a group of people who helped me the whole time,” he added.
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The actor also credited his “amazing” trainer Jason Walsh and “wonderful” chef Paulette Tejeda, as well as a nutritionist, adding that he had an “amazing group of people who kept feeding me, making it happen, making sure there was flexibility .”
“But we trained for about an hour, an hour and a half, every day before work,” Gyllenhaal told PEOPLE. “And then we always had to kind of taper back depending on what the schedule called for. So if the schedule called for more fighting and action where I needed more energy, we’d do less. And then you’d kind of get that throughout the day. So yeah, it was a village and I listened to what they said and this is the result.”
Road House will be released on Prime Video on March 21.
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Source: HIS Education