USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Sabotage’ is brutal
Training with film’s cast
GARDENA, CALIF. The last time True Blood’s hunkiest werewolf graced the big screen, he was painted entirely in gold paint as a hip- shaking stripper with an unprintable name in Magic Mike.
Joe Manganiello moves his bod in quite another way as the tattoo- covered, cornrow- wearing, fully armed Joe “Grinder” Phillips, part of an elite team of DEA agents in the action thriller
Sabotage, out Friday. “Needless to say, this is a very different set of skills,” he says. “Grinder don’t even dance.”
But he does take down some serious cartel baddies alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. Manganiello insists he acquired the skills, and the oddball look, from his real- life law- enforcement trainers before filming.
The look required a little help from heavy- metal band Black Sabbath, whom Manganiello saw in concert.
“The new drummer had cornrows and this huge beard and this biker look,” he recalls. “I looked at him and said, ‘ No one on Earth would ever think that guy was a cop.’ Which is exactly the point.”
His Sabotage look was sealed when one of his on- set lawenforcement trainers rocked a similar style. The trainers pushed the entire cast — including Terrence Howard, Sam Worthington and, yes, even Arnold — to repeat “breach and clearing” drills until they became second nature.
“We spent five hours a day here training for weeks,” says Manganiello, 37, sitting in a beaten school desk amid shooting targets at the tactical training center. “We’d breach and clear a building, go back out. They’d yell at you, give you notes.”
“I was cursed quite a bit about the training,” says writer/ director David Ayer, who has brought a gritty reality to films such as End
of Watch and Training Day ( on which he was a screenwriter). “But it’s all about teamwork. And when you do it enough, it becomes instinctive.”
Manganiello says he was eager to work with Ayer, but a meeting to discuss Sabotage in 2012 came right as his over- the- top stripper role was hitting screens.
“The first thing David said to
“Needless to say, this is a very different set of skills ( than in ‘ Magic Mike’). Grinder don’t even dance.”
me was, ‘ I took my wife to see Magic Mike this weekend,’ ” he says. “I thought that was the biggest strike against me.”
But Ayer saw through the pelvic thrusts, and Manganiello nabbed the part, adding 20 pounds of muscle to his 6- foot- 5, 250- pound frame for the role — partly to impress his film hero, Schwarzenegger. The icon was so blown away by his co- star’s physique, he wrote a foreword to Manganiello’s best- selling weight- lifting book, Evolution.
And Schwarzenegger didn’t disappoint with delivering his trademark lines, either. When he was offered milk for his coffee during a break, “he goes, ‘ Milk is for babies,’ ” Manganiello says, breaking into classic Ah- nold. “I still use that line.”
Now that Schwarzenegger has given his approval, Manganiello hopes viewers will appreciate his drastic new appearance.
“There is definitely a demographic of ‘ lady that goes after that tatted- up/ cornrow/ beard look,’ ” says Manganiello, who lost the beard and cornrows after filming ended. “The joke on set was that I was going to start getting letters from prison when the movie comes out. I’m anxiously waiting for that.”