While promoting his new film Road House, Jake Gyllenhaal opened up about how he experienced some physical setbacks while on the action-packed set.
During his appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Gyllenhaal revealed he not only suffered a hand injury during a fight scene with boxing legend Conor McGregor, but he also ended up with a staph infection as well.
He plays the role of former MMA fighter Elwood Dalton. “We’re fighting on the floor, we’re fighting around tables,” he explained “We’re fighting around glass, even if it’s breakaway glass. I put my hand on the bar, f—ing straight glass… I felt the glass go into my hand.”
Jake Gyllenhaal then said his whole arm “swelled up,” which is a result of a staph infection. “There were things like that that happened all the time,” he continued. “But gratefully I was really, really trying to take care of everything that we did, and my body while we’re doing it.”
Gyllenhaal further pointed out that he did not sustain any major injuries. “Which is a testament to the team I was working with,” he added.
Road House is a remark of the 1989 action-packed flick starring the late Patrick Swayze. The film follows Dalton as he takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse. He then discovers that this paradise is not all it seems. Starring in the film alongside Gyllenhaal and McGregor are Daniela Melchior, Billy Magnussen, B.K. Cannon, and Jessica Williams.
Conor McGregor Claims ‘Road House’ Fight Scenes With Jake Gyllenhaal Are ‘Very Much Real’
Meanwhile, Conor McGregor told PEOPLE earlier this week that the fight scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal were very much real.
“It wasn’t fake fighting,” he stated. “I don’t think so. As a man who fights for a living, it was very, very real. Very much real. There were real shots landed.”
Also chatting about the memorable fighting moments with Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor McGregor said, “I gave him a wallop, he gave me one back, and then the stuntmen that were stepping in at times took some big shots also.”
Also during his visit on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Gyllenhaal said some of the punches were real. “By mistake, he clocked me in the face,” the actor explained. “We would do a take [of] fake fighting, and then we’d go watch the monitors to see it back, to see what worked.”
Despite a few real punches, Jake Gyllenhaal stated that McGregor was always great with him. “He would tell me to do things like, ‘Oh, you know, turn your hand, move a little bit more this way to try to make it look more real.’”