‘True Lies is one of my favourite movies that I’ve done … So it was a great concept to do this as a series,’ action icon says
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For close to 30 years, not a day goes by where someone doesn’t stop Arnold Schwarzenegger and ask him when he’s going to do another movie like True Lies.
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“Everywhere I go, people ask me when I’m going to do another big action-comedy like True Lies,” Schwarzenegger, 75, says.
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So when Netflix came to him with the pitch for FUBAR, a laugh-filled adventure series, it was an immediate yes.
“It was based on True Lies … True Lies is one of my favourite movies that I’ve done,” Schwarzenegger tells Postmedia in an interview from Los Angeles. “So it was a great concept to do this as a series.”
Created by longtime television veteran Nick Santora (The Sopranos, Law & Order, Prison Break, Reacher), FUBAR casts Schwarzenegger as Luke Brunner, a covert spy who finds out his daughter (played by Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro) has also been secretly working as a CIA operative for years. With the two slowly learning that they didn’t really know one another at all, the father-daughter duo must team up on a globe-trotting undercover mission.
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It flips the script on Schwarzenegger’s 1994 film that co-starred Jamie Lee Curtis and centred on a skilled international spy who has to patch up his marriage while trying to stop a terrorist with nuclear ambitions.
Getting to work with executive producer David Ellison, with whom Schwarzenegger partnered with on Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate, and Santora, gave the former governor and bodybuilder the added nudge to want to star in his first scripted TV show.
“David Ellison does things with substance,” Schwarzenegger says. “Nick Santora is a great showrunner and the writing team was great … I was happy to be part of this.”
When he was at the height of his career in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Schwarzenegger, who became a household name thanks to his starring roles in the Conan and Terminator films, would never have even considered a TV series. But some of the most engaging stories are being told by streamers, he says.
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“Nowadays, TV shows are becoming the big new idea,” Schwarzenegger says animatedly. “It’s the big thing to be part of a TV series rather than a movie now.”
When the series premieres this May 25 on Netflix, he promises FUBAR “will kick your ass and make you laugh.”
After flying high with Tom Cruise on last summer’s Maverick, Barbaro, 32, says it was exhilarating to work with yet another industry titan and taking on a physically demanding role.
“We were shooting this show while Top Gun was rolling out with all of its publicity. So I was doing boxing lessons between red carpets,” Barbaro says with a grin, seated next to Schwarzenegger. “It was wild.”
Fortune Feimster, Jay Baruchel, Milan Carter, Travis Van Winkle, Gabriel Luna, Tom Arnold and Aparna Brielle round out the ensemble cast.
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After 2019’s Dark Fate, Schwarzenegger says he is finished playing the futuristic killing machine in his long-running Terminator series. But FUBAR is just the first of several high-profile projects that the actor plans to unveil in 2023. Next month, Netflix will release a three-part documentary, Arnold, which charts his rise from the countryside of Austria to achieving the American dream. Later this year, he will release his first self-help book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life.
By engaging with fans on social media — where he flips between showing off his Instagram-ready pet pals, speaking out on environmental causes and railing against far-right extremism — and through his newsletter promoting physical fitness, the father of five has found a new resurgence as he connects with a brand-new audience.
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And despite his father’s pleas to stay behind and become a police officer in Austria, looking back on it, Schwarzenegger is glad that he’s had a lifetime of playing the hero on the big screen.
“I think it’s fun to play law enforcement guys … I’ve played FBI agents, CIA agents, sheriffs, police officers and undercover agents, and all of that stuff,” he says. “But it’s because my dad was a police officer himself, and he always wanted me to become a police officer. He was very upset that I didn’t make his dream a reality. I was more interested in making my dream become reality, which was to go to America, become a world champion bodybuilder and get into show business and eventually play a police officer rather than being one.”
Schwarzenegger’s breaks into a grin as one final thought crosses his mind. “It was more fun.”
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