Twisted Metal: Why Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz & Thomas Haden Church Signed On For Wild Peacock Series
All 10 episodes of Twisted Metal hit Peacock July 27.
Sometimes actors just feel the need...the need for speed, that is. With all 10 episodes of Twisted Metal speeding onto Peacock later this week, NBC Insider caught up with three of the show's principal cast members — Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, and Thomas Haden Church — ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike to find out why they decided to join the video game adaptation.
Mackie leads the vehicular entropy as John Doe, an immature and amnesiac delivery man (referred to as a "milkman" within the world of the series) who sets out on a cross-country mission to pick up a mysterious package from the walled city of New Chicago on behalf of Raven (guest star Neve Campbell), enigmatic leader of New San Francisco.
RELATED: Everything to Know About Twisted Metal Star Anthony Mackie
Not far into his journey, Doe reluctantly joins forces with a taciturn car thief he aptly-names Quiet (Beatriz). The biggest threats found along their perilous, post-apocalyptic route are a Vegas-dwelling killer clown known as Sweet Tooth (physically played by Samoa Joe and voiced by Will Arnett) and hard-nosed highwayman Agent Stone (Haden Church).
Stone's overall goal is to reestablish some semblance of law and order in the Divided States of America, and he'll stop at nothing to resurrect the tedious bureaucracy that kept the world spinning before civilization went kaput in 2002.
Why the stars of Twisted Metal joined the new Peacock series
Anthony Mackie
"Well, coming off the heels of Deadpool — and one of my good friends [Ruben Fleischer] directed Zombieland — it was just being able to work with the creators of those two movies [Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick], as well as MJ being showrunner for Cobra Kai, which I loved. It was a no-brainer to be a part of it just because of the team that PlayStation and Peacock were starting to put together to create the show."
Stephanie Beatriz
"It’s executive-produced by the team behind Deadpool and Zombieland; written by Michael Jonathan Smith from Cobra Kai. The sort of gallows, dark, ridiculous humor that those pieces of art tap into. That dark humor is so silly and funny to me and I really wanted to be in something that had that. But there’s also high, high stakes; there’s action, there’s demolition derby-style car crashing. The show is absolutely unhinged and it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before. I’d never seen anything like it before. After my initial meeting with MJ about the show, I was really excited to read the scripts and I just raced through all 10 scripts and just really wanted to be a part of it. I’m very lucky that I got to be."
Thomas Haden Church
"I was not familiar with the game at all [when] the studio sent me the first three scripts. Then I had a really long, very gratifying phone call with Michael Jonathan Smith who was the showrunner and architect of all 10 episodes — along with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and Will Arnett and his partner and then all of the creative people from PlayStation. They hired a fantastic staff of writers; very innovative, very imaginative. It was just a world that I was intrigued by… to really be the guy that is trying to bring back a sense of justice and law and return society as much as he could to to pre-Y2K normal. He’s a hardened individual."
All 10 episodes of Twisted Metal hit Peacock this Thursday — July 27.
Want more original Peacock content in the meantime? Be sure to check out Bel-Air, Killing It, A Friend of the Family, Poker Face, Joe vs. Carole, Mrs. Davis, MacGruber, and Based on a True Story.
**These interviews were conducted before the actors' strike.**
