'True Lies' Stars Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga Detail On-Set Injuries and Intense Action Scenes (Exclusive)
Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga reimagine the roles famously played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in the 1994 action comedy, True Lies, for the new CBS reboot. Howey and Gonzaga play married couple Harry and Helen Tasker, and the pair sat down with ET's Nischelle Turner on Wednesday ahead of the premiere to detail the bumps and bruises they endured to bring the series to life.
"I pulled my left quadricep. I hurt my back. I broke this finger off a stunt guy's net," Howey recalled, listing off his on-set injuries after watching a clip of Curtis offering advice on how to survive intense action sequences: "Wear knee pads, and pads, because all I can tell you is I got very bruised. Let me just say that to you. Pad up! Elbows, knees, shoulders, butts. Pad up!" the original Helen advised.
"This is the first time I've seen you without your fake finger cast! Just kidding, real finger cast," Gonzaga quipped.
"I can't bend it, but yeah, you know it's part of the deal," Howey added, agreeing with Curtis' words of wisdom. "She's right, you got to pad up."
Howey shared that he took part in an extensive training to prepare to step into the shoes of Harry, from "muay thai boxing here and there" to learning how to shoot a gun.
"Careful what you wish for, you might just get it," he acknowledged. "Grew up with these kind of action comedies, these huge blockbusters and so I always wanted to do my own action and now that I have, I don’t want to do it anymore! I want the stunt guy to do it. I want the stunt double to do it."
Gonzaga credited Howey for doing almost "every single [stunt]." Joked Howey in response: "I don’t like it. I'm a bougie actor. I'll memorize my lines and I'll say it and then I'll go get a beverage with a walkie talkie and be in my cast chair sipping with a straw!"
For Gonzaga's part, Howey recounted an impressive moment while filming the pilot in New Orleans. "[We] did stunt training, [were] doing some stretching. All of a sudden Ginger Gonzaga’s doing front flips and it's like, whoa, where did this come from?" he marveled.
"I know I'm not a skilled fighter like Howey, but I’ve been training my whole life and just brave stupidity and a willingness to be like, 'Yea, I can do that. Let's see,'" Gonzaga said. "I've been doing this since I was six, so it was fun to try to incorporate that and then feel the physical effects of it the next day."
"I will say that because of all the action, because of all the stuff we had to do, it was the hardest thing we've ever done before," Howey admitted. "But she made me laugh every day. She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life."
In the CBS update, Howey plays Harry, a spy for the Omega Sector whose double life is accidentally discovered by his wife, Helen (Gonzaga). With his secret now out, Omega recruits Helen and she teams up with Harry and his operatives, embarking on covert missions -- all while keeping their adventures a secret from their children.
"It's a legendary movie. It was the first 100-million-dollar movie directed by the famous James Cameron. It was a huge blockbuster. I saw it in the movie theater. I grew up watching Mr. Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis. They're legends," Howey said of the original inspiration for the series.
Both admitted it was daunting stepping into the shoes left by Schwarzenegger and Curtis.
"Yes! I love Jamie. I'm guilty of having grown up really sheltered and I hadn't seen the film so I was lucky. I had the pressure off of me," Gonzaga said. "But the clip that I had seen of Jamie is when she's doing the dance and it's sexy and she falls over and instantly bounces back up. I think I read that she improvised that. She just knew how to make that brilliantly funny and I just love that mix."
The series will have some OG blood in the mix with Tom Arnold, who played Albert "Gib" Gibson in the original movie, making an appearance.
"He's so great," Howey praised, while Gonzaga called him "funny." "He's a really, really good actor," she added. "Any time the camera wasn't on him, he was still so locked into the scene and I was just like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm watching this great performance,' and a really, really funny improviser. Super sharp."
Viewers tuning in to True Lies may be familiar with Howey from Reba and Shameless, and Gonzaga from She-Hulk, and they pitched who they'd like to see pop in on the show.
"I would want to get Lip, [The Bear's] Jeremy Allen White on just because he's winning every award now," Howey said. "Bring some of that magic over!"
"Tatiana Maslany is amazing," Gonzaga said. "I would like to see her play something weird! And Josh Segarra is the funniest. He played Pug on She-Hulk. He reminds me a lot of Howey. I think it would be funny if I had you two together in the scene."
True Lies premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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