Anthony Mackie spent the better part of his childhood playing Twisted Metal on the Playstation. Now, he’s the face of Peacock’s adaptation, which debuted Thursday — nearly two decades after the first version of the game.
Fans of Twisted Metal will know that the vehicular combat games don’t exactly tell a story. “It was just a bunch of people, a bunch of cars, who do you want to fight?” as the Marvel actor put it.
“So with the series, we were able to make that backstory and create that background to where now you’re invested in these characters. And when you go back and play the game, now you have a completely different relationship with those characters who are in the game,” he told Deadline during a recent interview.
Mackie plays John Doe, a motor-mouthed outsider living in a post-apocalyptic world where he’s tasked with delivering packages to and from the various new settlements that have popped up around the country. When the leader of one of these settlements offers him a chance at life on the inside, he jumps at the opportunity, though it will require him to make one last dangerous trek to deliver a mysterious item.
With the help of an ax-wielding car thief named Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz), John faces savage marauders driving vehicles of destruction and other dangers of the open road, including the infamous deranged clown Sweet Tooth (Samoa Joe).
“Samoa did not pull his punches. And I’m like, ‘Dude, you’re a professional wrestler. One thing you know how to do is not hit somebody.’ But it was great. I had a lot of fun. I can say I fought a wrestler,” Mackie joked of working with the wrestling champ.
Naturally, the series also involved quite a bit of stunt driving. Wherever possible, Mackie told Deadline that he preferred to do his own tricks.
“We had a great group of drivers, and because of that a lot of the stuff we were able to do practically. I really got to drive 50 miles an hour around a mall with somebody chasing me. We really got to jump out of the front window and do all this crazy stuff, because our drivers were so talented,” Mackie explained. “And some of the big stuff…when you see a car flying over a bridge, that wasn’t Anthony.”
John is an original character, as is Quiet. So, while the series has source material, the actors still had the opportunity to build their characters from scratch within the confines of the world that was already created. Throughout the 10 episodes, viewers get hints at both of their pasts, though Mackie says there’s plenty more where that came from.
“We had a great group of writers, and John’s backstory was very important. Just simply because you have to think of and create all that stuff now, to where when you go into hopefully the next season or the third season, you have all that stuff written for you to build upon,” he said. “You don’t want to play catch up, and then the first season makes no sense. So we dove into that and really made John a character that people would enjoy and want to hang out with. John’s the guy you want to have a beer with.”
After spending much of the past decade of his career as former United States Air Force pararescue airman Sam Wilson (aka Falcon) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mackie said he jumped at the opportunity to not only dive into a world he grew up with, but also a character that “just enjoys his life.”
“[He’s a] glass half full kind of guy. And I love that. I love the idea of, ‘Nobody’s gonna fuck up my day. This is a great day.’ You give this dude’s lemons, he will make lemonade,” he said. “So I wanted to spend five months just in that happy go lucky place of, ‘What could go wrong? Who knows?’”
Without giving anything away (this is a spoiler-free story, after all), the Twisted Metal finale certainly tees up another season nicely. If Peacock does renew the series for another go-round, Mackie said he’d like to see John “grow up a little bit.”
“He’s going to have some challenges that’s gonna come his way that’s gonna force his hand to be more of an adult and make some really tough decisions because you can’t be a milkman all your life,” he teased. “We’ve seen what happens to milkmen. So you have to decide what’s most important — hold your milkman status, or grow up and be an adult.”
All 10 episodes of Twisted Metal are now streaming on Peacock.
