The New Marvel Hercules Had A Ridiculously Short Time To Get Ready
That is not a long timeline.
Brett Goldstein of Ted Lasso fame is… well, he’s Brett Goldstein of Ted Lasso fame. He’s not Dave Bautista, he’s not John Cena, and he’s not Dwayne Johnson. Nor is he part of the Marvel Chris team; neither a Hemsworth, an Evans, nor a Pratt. He is not, in short, the kind of guy you can expect — at any given time — to look like he’s ready to arm wrestle the Hulk and fight off an army of Dark Elves before breakfast. But according to a new interview, that’s exactly what was expected of the actor for his cameo as the Marvel hero Hercules in this year’s Thor: Love and Thunder, and he only had two weeks to prepare.
Speaking to The Playlist this week, Brett Goldstein said he was given an insanely short window between Marvel casting him as Hercules and the actor needing to show up ready to play the strongman. Goldstein told The Playlist he was called “literally out of the blue one night.” He continued, saying that he warned the director that he was not of the Dwayne Johnson body type. “When I spoke to Taika, I said, ‘You know I’m basically like a skinny comedian?’” Goldstein recalled. “I said, ‘When is this filming?’ It was like in two weeks, and I was like, ‘I mean, I’ll do my best, but two weeks feels…’ I said, ‘He doesn’t have to be as big as Thor, does he?’ And look, on the day, I mean, I’m doing 400 push-ups that day. I was fit to explode. I did the best I could on that day.”
Judging by his appearance in that cameo as Marvel’s Hercules, Brett Goldstein’s best was pretty damn good. Albeit he’s only in one shot, and all he does is stand up from the traditional superhero knee to say, “Yes, father.” Still, the guy looks pretty ripped in that one shot. From the looks of him, if he’d had to go toe-to-toe with the Odinson in that movie, he could make a go of it.
As much as others were surprised with the Marvel casting of Goldstein as Hercules, the Ted Lasso star says he was no different. “They turn around, and they reveal, ‘It’s Hercules; it’s you.’ And I went, ‘What?’ Just like, ‘Are you serious? Are you f—ing with me? Is this a wind-up?’” He also made it clear several times that he has no idea what the plans are for his character in future projects.
Of course, from the dialogue in the post-credits scene, you would think Marvel has a Thor-Hercules clash planned on the horizon, but you never really know. The mid and post-credits scene always have the potential to plant seeds that never bear fruit. For example, 2017’s Doctor Strange has Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo tease a future conflict between himself and the titular hero. But while a variant of the character fights Strange in this year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we have yet to see any kind of reunion between the Earth-616 versions of Mordo and Strange.
