“I think, I hit my head pretty hard”: Glen Powell Was Left Feeling Dazed After Co-star From Christopher Nolan’s $1 Billion Film Went Overboard in a Violent Stunt Scene
Glen Powell is no stranger to action movies. In fact, one of the first characters he appeared as on the big screen was that of Long-fingered Boy in the action-comedy movie Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, which starred A-listers like Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas.
Fast forward to 2022, Powell appeared in one of the most successful action movies of the decade Top Gun: Maverick. However, a stunt he had to do in one of his lesser-known appearances in the Christopher Nolan movie The Dark Knight Rises proved to be a little more violent than what he had expected it to be.
Glen Powell Revealed the One Action Scene That Left Him Dazed in The Dark Knight Rises
Before landing his breakthrough role in the Top Gun sequel as the supporting character Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin, Glen Powell had appeared in quite a few movies and shows in guest and minor roles. His performance in the dark comedy slasher Scream Queens initially helped him gain recognition in the industry.
Many might not know that Powell also had a minor role in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, which grossed $1 billion at the global box office (via The Numbers). In the scene, Tom Hardy’s character Bane slams the Anyone But You star’s head into the keyboard and he faints.
Reflecting on the scene in a recent interview with IMDb, Powell revealed that they practiced the scene a couple of times, and Hardy was supposed to give him a little tap on the head, and some prep before slamming his head into the keyboard. However, the last time that they did the scene, it turned out to be a little more violent.
And then this last time, you know, I think we all just got kind of caught up in it, and he [Hardy] just slammed my head on the keyboard. And I remember just, like, getting kind of dazed. And Chris Nolan was, like, ‘That was perfect, Glen.’ I was like, Yeah, I think I hit my head pretty hard on the keyboard.
The movie’s cinematographer Wally Pfister then said that he forgot to press record and Nolan asked the actor if he could do it again. When the Hit Man actor said he could, luckily, they revealed that they were just joking and asked him to get medical help.
Glen Powell Initially Did Not Know What Exactly His Scene Was Going to Be
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Cillian Murphy revealed that Christopher Nolan’s strategy to make sure the details of his movies do not get leaked or photocopied at any point during the development is to print the script on red paper. The Dark Knight Rises was no exception as revealed by Powell in the IMDb interview.
He was also not allowed to take the script home, which meant that the actor not only had no idea of what the scene actually was but also had to learn his lines while on the set.
You kind of do your thing where you’re trying to understand this character– but you really don’t have a full picture of things. For the biggest movie of my life at that point, I sort of had very little context.
It was not until he arrived on the day of the shoot of his scene that he felt that he was actually in a Batman movie although the superhero himself was not there in the scene.
The Dark Knight Rises is available for streaming on Max.
