"I was very excited and at the same time scared and not knowing what to expect. I got thrown right into the fire. I went from doing an audition with Benny Safdie, the writer and director and then we got a text saying 'see you in three weeks' and then I was in Vancouver and I'm on scenes with two of the biggest movie stars in the world, Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson. It was pretty surreal."
"[Benny] Safdie was great. I leaned on him a lot. He made it very comfortable. I didn't walk into a scene and feel overwhelmed, which I thought I would it being my first time. He made it seem like 'Hey. It's nothing. Walk in there. Do your thing. If you need to use your own words a little bit you can do that.' I credit a lot of that being comfortable to Benny Saf"
Ryan Bader, former Bellator two-division champion, has not fought since 2024. He appears in The Smashing Machine alongside Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. He portrays UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman, friend and coach to Mark Kerr. Director Benny Safdie cast Bader after an audition and summoned him to Vancouver within weeks. Bader described feeling excited and scared and compared his preparation to training for a big fight. Safdie's direction and era-focused approach made Bader comfortable on set and allowed him to use his own words during scenes.
Read at Cageside Press
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