War With Grandpa Cast Lied About Their Fitness To Film Dodgeball Scene
The War with Grandpa's Jane Seymour reveals some of the movie's cast lied about their fitness levels in order to participate in a dodgeball scene.
According to star Jane Seymour, some members of The War with Grandpa's cast lied about their fitness levels so they could take part in the movie's dodgeball sequence. The family comedy stars movie veterans Robert De Niro, Cheech Marin, and Christopher Walken, among others. De Niro plays the title grandpa, Ed, who faces a battle with his grandson, Peter (Oakes Fegley), after moving into his room. Seymour co-stars as Diane, a store worker who eventually begins a relationship with Ed, while Marin and Walken play his two friends. All three help Ed in his war against Peter.
The War with Grandpa was filmed in 2017, despite only releasing a few months ago. The delay was partly due to the movie's original distributor, The Weinstein Company's Dimension Films. After it was announced the company wouldn't release the movie, The War with Grandpa's future was uncertain for a couple years. However, 101 Studios acquired the distribution rights to the film in June 2020, eventually leading to its release in October. Despite the movie earning largely negative reviews, The War with Grandpa unseated Tenet as the #1 movie at the U.S. box office following its debut.
In an interview with CinemaBlend, Seymour discussed one of The War with Grandpa's biggest scenes, which sees Ed and Peter enlist their friends to play in a dodgeball game. It's a very active sequence, involving trampolines and a large portion of the movie's cast. However, according to Seymour, participating required light lying from some of the film's actors:
I never thought that at my age I’d be jumping up and down, bouncing and falling and jumping off walls with people that looked like they were going to the hospital before me, and which one of us would be the first to be carried out. We were all lying. We weren’t lying about our age, you can’t do that anymore, but we were all lying about our fitness levels, that was for sure … Cheech actually knew he was going to have a knee or a hip replacement straight afterwards. So, I don’t know what he was doing bouncing up and down. I mean, that was crazy; he could have completely blown out his limbs.
Seymour's story offers an amusing look behind-the-scenes of The War with Grandpa. Considering how fun the dodgeball scene looked, it's no wonder some members of the movie's cast were willing to lie in order to take part. It clearly worked out, as the sequence is one of the film's best and was bolstered by the cast's performances. Even though Seymour acknowledges it could have ended badly, stunt teams generally take good care of actors during risky scenes, which likely helped prevent any injuries.
Of course, accidents on film sets do happen, sometimes because of cast members attempting their own stunts. There's no way to prevent these entirely, other than to take necessary precautions. In the case of The War with Grandpa, the cast's participation enhanced the sequence and didn't result in any negative consequences. In fact, it sounds like it was one of the more entertaining scenes for Seymour and her co-stars to shoot, which comes across in the final product.
Source: CinemaBlend