Dev Patel On BREAKING HIS HAND During 'Monkey Man' Fight Scene
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00:00 - First off, congratulations on this film.
00:02 It was incredible.
00:04 I was literally freaking out.
00:06 It was so good.
00:08 And I really, really love the theme
00:10 of kind of reconciling with your past and your pain.
00:14 I think that was so important
00:16 and it really resonated with me.
00:18 I think a lot of people will also find it resonates
00:20 with them.
00:22 You just got a standing ovation at South by Southwest.
00:25 Like, talk about how emotional it made you.
00:30 - Man, thank you for that.
00:31 It was very overwhelming.
00:34 Like this film, I've been bruised and battered
00:37 and emotionally, you know, just torn up by it.
00:40 And I've had to say goodbye
00:42 to some of the most amazing opportunities as an actor
00:45 to kind of stick with this and birth
00:47 this little gremlin of a movie.
00:48 And, you know, we'd went to South by,
00:52 we went with the film in our hands
00:53 'cause it was so fresh.
00:55 We just finished the sound and the picture.
00:58 And, you know, to be gone from a dark editing room
01:01 into this huge kind of like the world,
01:03 I was feeling very raw and people were so kind
01:07 and they were whooping and hollering.
01:09 And it was probably the most incredible experience
01:13 I've ever had in a cinema period.
01:14 And it happened to be my film, which was mad,
01:17 but truly humbling.
01:19 And it won the audience award, which was crazy.
01:22 But, you know, yeah.
01:24 Yeah, and in terms of your first thing about trauma,
01:27 thank you for saying,
01:28 one of the first quotes my producing partner Joe gave me
01:31 was an Indian philosophical quote
01:33 called "The pain will leave you
01:35 once it's finished teaching you."
01:37 - Yeah. - And I was like,
01:38 that's gonna be the core tenant of this film.
01:39 - Wow, yeah, definitely felt that.
01:42 The action was like another aspect
01:45 that was absolutely incredible.
01:46 Like, it's amazing seeing you in this light.
01:49 Talk about the training you endured
01:51 and your transformation.
01:53 - The training was tough
01:55 because I was spinning so many plates, you know?
01:58 It was like learning my lines, you know,
02:01 doing all the duties that a director has to do
02:04 on an island during a pandemic with a very limited budget.
02:08 And then, you know, having to cram in choreo.
02:11 So we'd do that in the morning
02:12 and I made it tough on myself
02:14 'cause I wanted to kind of hold the shots
02:17 for as long as I could sometimes.
02:18 And as he gets better as a fighter, we cut less and less.
02:23 So you really, it relies on a performance really,
02:25 you know, to hold the camera
02:27 and how do we fill the frame with background
02:29 and keep the energy going and keep the camera moving.
02:32 So that was a big, big process.
02:34 And, you know, I was eating sweet potato, salmon,
02:37 and lettuce for three times a day for nine months.
02:42 And that's it, the same thing.
02:44 You know, sometimes cubed, sometimes in a strip of salmon,
02:47 but that was it.
02:48 And that was tough.
02:50 But I wanted him to be this kind of like, you know,
02:52 this skinny, shredded underdog that could pose as a waiter.
02:56 He doesn't, you know, he's not like bursting
02:58 out of his uniform and you, you know,
03:00 you genuinely fear like, is he gonna make it?
03:02 Can he beat these guys?
03:03 You know, and that for me is like,
03:06 that's a true origin story of like what a hero should be.
03:09 Someone that, you know, is facing formidable opponents
03:12 and you think, how is he gonna get the tools to do this?
03:15 - No, absolutely.
03:16 And then, I mean, even just filming itself.
03:18 Talk about your broken hand, literally filming through that.
03:22 I mean, like, how did that happen?
03:23 Like, what scene?
03:25 - Well, it started with my, I got a bunch of broken toes
03:28 'cause I got my foot stamped on in a stunt session.
03:31 And that was messed up two weeks before shoot.
03:34 And that, so you know when you're stopping on a dime
03:36 and doing choreo and you just, it's like very painful.
03:39 And then the first fight scene we had,
03:43 my, by accident, my co-star snapped my hand
03:48 and they call it a boxers fracture or something.
03:52 And my hand just started ballooning.
03:54 And we carried on filming the whole day
03:56 'cause we couldn't lose that shoot day.
03:58 And then I got on a private plane
04:01 'cause we had to keep this COVID bubble, you know, secure.
04:05 Got put under, got a screw put in it.
04:08 And this doctor's like, you know,
04:09 you cannot do any, put any weight on it.
04:12 You know, no more than like two pounds of pressure.
04:15 There's like a screw in there.
04:17 And if that screw bends, we will not be able to pull it out.
04:19 We'll be like pulling out a bent nail out of wood.
04:22 And I was like, got you doc, copy that.
04:24 And then we go straight back to the action scene.
04:27 And we had to tweak some of the choreo to be one handed,
04:30 which when I watch it, I'm like,
04:32 oh man, I could have done that so much better.
04:34 You should have seen me in the stunt room.
04:36 But it worked.
04:37 It's like, you know, by any means necessary,
04:39 like the guy in the film.
04:41 - Oh, absolutely.
04:42 With all that, is the success even sweeter
04:45 knowing how much you've endured?
04:47 - I think so.
04:48 I mean, you know, there was times when everyone around me,
04:51 even my nearest and dearest were like, you've gone insane.
04:54 Like, you know, it was, it went from being a passion
04:57 to an infliction at some stage.
04:59 But I, you know, I don't know if it's madness or what,
05:04 but you have to stick by it.
05:06 You know, you are the mother and father of your own film.
05:09 And I had to ferociously protect it.
05:12 And I learned a lot about the business, the industry,
05:16 about the politics of it all.
05:18 And we've come out, we've come out victorious.
05:21 And it's thanks to Jordan and Universal
05:24 and all the incredible souls that helped me make it.
05:27 So I'm lucky.
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