Ryan Bader has accomplished a lot in his fighting career, but these days he’s receiving rave reviews for his performance playing UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman in the new film The Smashing Machine. But it turns out he almost missed out on getting the opportunity to play the part after accidentally ignoring texts from the director.
Benny Safdie, who is best known for co-directing the Adam Sandler-led film Uncut Gems as well as his appearance in the Oscar-winning movie Oppenheimer, reached out to Bader
to gauge his interest in potentially playing a part in the MMA-themed movie.
“I got a text from the director,” Bader explained when speaking to MMA Fighting. “He didn’t really say his full name, what he was doing and all that. He was just asking if we had time to have a little talk. I had no idea so I blew him off for like three weeks.
“[We] finally got together and told me about the premise and the movie and did a little Zoom audition after that. Ended up getting the part and it was a lot of fun.”
While he almost missed out on the opportunity at first, Bader was cast in the role as Coleman, who was a central part of the story focused around Mark Kerr as he attempted to get his career back on track after signing with Pride Fighting Championships.
The film, which is based upon the 2002 documentary of the same name, features both Coleman and Kerr as they prepare to compete in the historic PRIDE Grand Prix in 2000. Of course as a veteran MMA fighter, Bader was very familiar with Coleman but playing him in a movie was an entirely different kind of challenge to tackle.
“I talked to him, and I got the producers to fly Coleman out for a day and a half to be on set and to watch it and he was kind of blown away,” Bader said. “[Mark] Kerr was on set. It was surreal. The fighting is in my wheelhouse, but we had to go through two weeks of stunt training to learn how to sell a punch and make it look like a real punch.
“What’s cool is with the fights, we don’t do the full fight, but the clips that we do when we show the fights, we rehearsed it to make it look like the real fight. We’re doing everything that they did. So it was cool.”
Bader was understandably nervous stepping on set for the first time because he shares so much time doing dialogue with Dwayne Johnson, who portrays Kerr in the film. Add in Academy Award-nominated actress Emily Blunt playing Kerr’s girlfriend and Bader was jumping right into the deep end as an actor during the first day of production.
“This role is pretty big,” Bader said. “A lot of dialogue in that story with Coleman and the MMA, the fighting part comes pretty natural but just thrown in the deep end with two of the biggest movie stars on the planet with ‘The Rock’ and Emily Blunt.
“I get nervous for anything but especially that first one. It was a pretty big scene, my first dialogue scene, and you’re in a house with a bunch of people there, everybody’s looking at you, you’ve never done this before and it was like let’s go. I did that and after that I felt pretty comfortable. It’s just something new. I’ve never been in that position. The fight scenes were great. We’re in our fight shorts. We’re in the ring, we choreographed it already. Those were in my wheelhouse, those were fun. But the weird different part, all right you’re in a room and you have 9 or 10 lines and you go back and forth with ‘The Rock.’ It’s pretty surreal. I felt like we all did really well, and I’m excited about it for sure.”
The fight scenes, while staged and choreographed, still had to look real, but Bader felt comfortable any time he was throwing or taking punches. It was the dialogue heavy moments when the former Bellator heavyweight champion felt a few butterflies fluttering around his stomach but Safdie got him through it.
“You’re shooting those fight scenes, I mean we’re there for seven hours getting after it,” Bader said. “It was tough. I’m not saying it was tougher than an MMA fight but a lot of work was put into it. Going into the dialogue scenes, I talked to Benny Safdie, the director, and I’m like do I need to get an acting coach? He’s like nope. He’s like I’m your acting coach, I want you how you are in your audition on Zoom, just show up ready.
“It was pretty crazy. Not my world and you just show up, and there’s 80 people in a room, cameras, and it’s like ‘do you want to try one?’ and you just get after it.”
With The Smashing Machine opening worldwide on Friday, Bader’s performance has not only earned him a lot of attention, but he actually ended up signing with a talent agency that may eventually lead to him getting more roles in the future.
“I’m just honored I was able to get that part and represent a guy like Coleman,” Bader said. “I hope I did it justice.”
