During an interview with Hollywood Life, Matthew Willig spoke on playing Andre The Giant on Young Rock. Here’s what he had to say:
They didn’t even ask me to gain weight. I knew I needed to. I needed to have that Andre feel. He wasn’t a guy that worked out. He wasn’t buff or cut up. He was just Andre, you know? I kind of had to eat myself into that. I gained about 35 pounds, which is a lot of weight, and I am not a small guy to begin with… I have been as low as 275 and have beefed up in the last year and hovered around 295ish. On my frame at six-eight, I don’t look fat at all, but I knew I needed to add fat. Thirty-five pounds was tough. I did it in increments three months before I shot, including adding the last 10 in Australia while in quarantine and nothing to do, so it was a little easier at that point. But again, I tried to make sure that when my shirt was off and trunks, I wanted to have that Andre look as much as possible.
The first challenge was the accent, and I know there are critics who will say things, and I know people said I sounded Russian. But Andre’s accent was so unique that I worked with a French dialect coach and sort of learned the speech patterns of the French and some of the words he would say or interpret into English, and that was a big challenge. And then from that, he was very lazy with his talk. He had a really big tongue, and there was a lot of mumbling. It was challenging to hone in on the voice.
You can check out the interview HERE.
Credit: Hollywood Life.