In Ben Stiller’s comedy ‘Tropic Thunder’, Downey Jr. portrayed a method actor, while McBride played an explosives expert. McBride’s character, perched in a watchtower above the production, was equipped with an earpiece to communicate with the set.
Published Date – 5 April 2024, 10:00 AM
Los Angeles: Actor and comedian Danny McBride recalled accidentally hearing Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. going method on himself and staying in character as he went to take a bathroom break in between takes.
Downey Jr. played a method actor in Ben Stiller’s comedy ‘Tropic Thunder’, where McBride played an explosives expert and was given an earpiece to communicate with the set as his character was perched in a watchtower above the production.
The earpiece was connected to the microphones of several of the cast and crew down below.
“I guess during one of the takes, they had left Downey’s mic on, and so I’m sitting up there, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I can hear what he’s saying’,” McBride said in a GQ video interview, reports variety.com.
“He was talking to people, and he was in character the whole time. And then I even watched him walk back to his trailer and saw it from down there, and he was talking to himself…,” he said.
“He made up a song about how he was gonna go p*** in character for no one else’s benefit except for his own,” McBride added.
Downey starred in the film as an egotistical Australian thespian, who takes method acting to an extreme by undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to darken his skin in order to play a soldier in a war movie.
