Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickson didn’t know each other well before shooting their new drama “The Iron Claw.”
But then came their first wardrobe fitting and camera tests. “Our bodies had to be completely shaved,” White told me at a reception for the film at NeueHouseHollywood on Monday in Los Angeles. “We were strangers at the time. Now I know them and love them, but at the time, it was like, ‘Hi, nice to meet you and yes, they’re shaving off all of our body hair.’”
“They shaved everything,” Dickinson said.
White added, “It was incredible but we also looked ridiculous.”
Directed by Sean Durkin, the film tells the real-life story of the Von Erich brothers, Kevin (Efron), Kerry (White), David (Dickinson) and Mike (Stanley Simons), one of wrestling’s most famous families that suffered an enormous amount of personal tragedy.
Following the shaving, the actors had to squeeze into their itsy-bitsy 1980s wrestling costumes. “It was always smaller, always shorter. It was never, ‘Cover up their skin,’” White remembered. “I don’t think any of us were confident in those first fittings. “We were like, ‘We have a lot of work to do.’”
And work they did.
White packed on about 25 pounds of muscle and Dickinson gained about 22. But nothing compared to Efron’s Hulk-like transformation. “I joke about it but it’s true — I didn’t want to stand close to him while shooting the movie because it would make me look my size,” White said. “But it’s hard because we play brothers. I do have to be around him. Although I tried to make Harris stand next to him most of the time.”
Dickinson said, “I’m not naturally like a beefy guy. I’m a pretty skinny dude. You look at pictures of the boys and they’re like big boys. So we just tried to eat a load and train and lift a lot of weight. I was immediately upping my calories to like 3,000.”
“The Iron Claw” will be released in theaters Dec. 22.
