Zac Efron dived into the deepest depths of his psyche to play serial killer Ted Bundy – but it was playing wrestler Kevin Von Erich in The Iron Claw that made him the most uncomfortable.
The High School Musical star, 36, found mainstream success as a teenager in the hit Disney franchise, but years later stunned fans by taking on the part of serial killer Bundy in 2019’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile for Netflix.
However, it’s his latest role in The Iron Claw, which lands on Prime Video in the UK on July 12, that caused him more mental and physical discomfort.
Efron’s staggering physical transformation for the part has taken up plenty of column inches, but I was keen to find out what it felt like to break that iron discipline – and it turns out we all saw the exact moment.
I chatted with Efron and writer-director Sean Durkin via Zoom, three months after they first started the grinding promotional circuit.
It’s testament to Efron that he’s willing to hop back into talking all things Iron Claw still, so long after filming wrapped (principal photography ran for six weeks from October 2022), demonstrating that it became almost as much of a passion project for him as it was for Durkin.
A lot rests on his hulking shoulders (and biceps) in the film, as the sweet yet dedicated oldest son Kevin of the famous and colourful Von Erich wrestling family.
Contrary to his beefed-up size, it’s a nuanced and gentle performance from the star as a young man who cares deeply for his brothers and just wants to please his authoritarian father.
Efron’s intense preparation for the part saw him gain 15lbs of pure muscle, while working out multiple times a day.
With all the fuss around what Efron and his colleagues did to get into shape, how did he get out of it – and how enjoyable was it to break that discipline?
‘We actually got to shoot that in a scene. There was a scene in the movie that I didn’t even know it was gonna happen, but Sean just put a bunch of cheeseburgers in a truck,’ the Greatest Showman star recalls. ‘And we just drove around and ate in silence. I think I had like three or four cheeseburgers in one take.’
‘It was pretty awesome,’ he chuckles, over what is a fond memory (and fair enough).
It also came a little earlier than Efron was expecting.
‘We still had a week of filming left. But most of the wrestling was done at that point – you definitely don’t want to go into the ring with a full stomach,’ he advises, with the air of someone who may have learned that the hard way.
Efron says that playing the wrestling personality came with ‘a lot’ of painful and embarrassing moments, which is not something he’s dealt with before.
‘It’s a very uncomfortable arena just to be in, physically, of course, but a lot of that stuff, once you’re doing it, it becomes a part of your body, sort of like dancing – so you’re in it,’ he tells me, elaborating about the wrestling matches he trained to perform in The Iron Claw.
The breaks between, however, were not nearly as natural or relaxed for the actor.
‘One of the jarring moments that I wasn’t expecting was when the wrestling stops, or there’s a cut, or in between setups or takes – you’ve just got to stand there with a whole crowd around, in your underwear. And there’s nothing really going on.’
‘That’s a different kind of feeling. I’ve never experienced that one before,’ he adds, a sheepish smile on his face. ‘You just kind of gotta… like, where do you put your hands? On your hips? You can’t help – there are people everywhere, you can’t look up and have somebody not looking back at you! So that was a bit unnatural.’
At this point in our interview, Efron is at his most relatable, recalling the sheer awkwardness of this situation, repeated plenty when you’re playing a barefoot wrestler who only wore a pair of tiny trunks.
However, he admits with a laugh that ‘you get used to that too’.
‘It was all very uncomfortable, but I think so is everything great when you’re learning it.’
Efron is also not shy about how it felt to be in that kind of impressive shape – which sounds like it was both incredible and kind of awful at the same time.
‘It’s a combination. You’re sore a lot. It’s called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and they get pretty debilitating. It’s hard to move around and you just feel old.
‘But other than that, there’s so much adrenaline. I think when you’re in the ring wrestling, you kind of become invincible. I don’t know what I could relate it to other than skateboarding when I was a kid – but you can do incredible things and the pain is dissociated from your mind, until you get home later that night, and you’re like, ‘F**k man, what did I do?’ and your ribs are broken or something.’
Efron trained alongside Harris Dickinson, The Bear actor Jeremy Allen White and Stanley Simons, who play the rest of the Von Erich siblings – David, Kerry and Mike – all of whom wrestled in their father Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling territory, a precursor to today’s WWE.
Fritz (played by Mind Hunter’s Holt McCallany), who had been a world-champion wrestler in his own right and creator of the ‘Iron Claw’ hold, was an unforgiving father who is seen driving his sons to their physical limits on screen.
Did filmmaker Durkin ever feel a little guilt over, or sympathy with, what his actors were putting themselves through to be in the kind of shape they needed to be in?
Short answer: no.
‘I didn’t, because I respected what they did but I also left it to them, to go on their own journeys for whatever they wanted to do physically to get into the shape they felt was right for the character,’ he tells me.
He was, however, careful not to set any kind of target for them to meet.
‘We never talked about getting to a certain size or anything like that, I didn’t want to put any sort of framework on [what] they should be hitting – so, they did the work they wanted to do, and obviously, signing up for a role like this, that’s a part of it.
‘But I appreciated every second of it, and I saw the effort and the hard work, we’re all working to get to the same place and the same page.’
Efron agrees that their exacting training paid off, too.
‘There was so much of the way that you feel, the way that you walk, the way it changes your demeanour – all of that goes into the character in one way or another, so it all became one kind of process.’
Durkin, 42, known for Martha Marcy May Marlene and psychological drama The Nest with Jude Law, is a real wrestling enthusiast.
He set about to recreate lots of famous matches ‘in great detail’ in The Iron Claw, which includes appearances from the likes of wrestling legends Ric Flair and Harley Race, as well as famous tag team matches from the Von Erich brothers.
‘I was a big wrestling fan and so it kind of came naturally to me, and then I worked with Chavo Guerrero Jr., our trainer, to tweak them. He has so much experience that he’d say, “Okay, well, it’d be better if we did this or this instead of this”.’
Durkin also knew his and his actors’ standards had to remain rigorous, considering the fanbase they had to impress.
‘Once the guys started to learn how to wrestle, we knew wrestling is the kind of thing where if you don’t deliver at the highest quality, wrestling fans are not going to buy the movie. It had to be as good as it could be and the actors just worked really hard, and they were real naturals. So it allowed us to really hit that high level that I that I hoped we’d be able to.’
Efron is keen to lavish praise on their wrestling experts and trainers.
‘I can’t give a big enough shout-out to the guys we worked with out there. We had an incredible stunt team, and the guys in the ring really took care of us. I think they recognised that we had an enthusiasm and a passion to make this as real as possible and that just fuelled them to take extra care of us and teach us little nuances and point out things.’
‘We developed this real comfortable relationship where any tweak, any note, is welcome, and that really helped a lot,’ he shares.
For those yet unversed on the Von Erichs (which is what Durkin would prefer if you’re not already into all things wrestling), suffice it to say that the WWE Hall of Fame family became linked with a so-called ‘curse’ due to the tragedy that they face.
It’s led to many a surprised fan leaving the cinema (the film’s already out in the US) shocked at The Iron Claw’s tone and events, considering that WWE is perhaps best known to those outside of its hardcore fandom as camp entertainment, linked to the likes of Hollywood stars who embrace comedy roles like Dwayne Johnson, John Cena and Dave Bautista.
Plenty have demanded hugs for its star, Efron, after an impressively quiet performance, a world away from the musicals and comedies most often associated with his name.
‘I mean, that’s what you want, to have people feeling connected to characters when you make something and connected to the journey and emotionally invested and care,’ Durkin says of this emotional reaction.
‘When we started this, it felt like a very sort of niche world of wrestling and of this quite extreme Texas wrestling family – and it has proven to be so universal. There’s so much about the people from such a variety of places and experiences are connecting to. And that’s what I hoped, that’s why I wanted to make it.’
The Iron Claw hits Prime Video in the UK on July 12.
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