Rob Lowe ‘obsessed’ with Halifax Explosion
Actor Rob Lowe has declared himself “obsessed’’ with the Halifax Explosion, telling latenight host
Jimmy Kimmel he successfully had his character in a new movie named for the deadly blast.
Lowe appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Monday night to promote his new movie, “Super Troopers 2,’’ in which he plays Guy Le Franc, hockey-star-turned-mayor of a Quebec town at the centre of a U.S.-Canadian border dispute.
Kimmel and Lowe — who has filmed several projects in the Halifax area — discussed the explosion with a mix of awe at its impact and irreverent humour of a sort rarely heard in the city where about 2,000 people died.
Lowe played a clip from the movie in which Le Franc explains his nickname comes from the 1917 blast in wartime Halifax.
Kimmel professed to have never heard of the blast, in which a munitions ship caught fire after colliding with another vessel and exploded.
“It’s true — and I’m obsessed with it,’’ he told Kimmel, adding the nickname was not in the original script for the movie, which opens Friday in Canada.
“My name was ‘the Explosion.’ I went to them and said I want to play ‘the Halifax Explosion.’ They didn’t know what it was,’’ Lowe tells Kimmel.
Lowe told Kimmel the death toll is “not good for the comedy.’’
“It was 100 years ago so we can laugh about it,’’ Kimmel joked.