Pete Davidson, roll out! The EX-Saturday Night Live star has his biggest movie role yet – in terms of character scale, anyway – in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the seventh entry in the film franchise based on Hasbro’s beloved toy line, Transforming Robots. Davidson lends his signature vocal styles to the Autobot good guy, Mirage, and as far as he’s concerned, this may be his best performance yet. At least that’s what Davidson confessed The Rising of the Beasts Director, Steven Caple Jr.
“He saw the movie and he was like, ‘This is the best job I’ve ever done, and I’m not really into it!'” Caple told Yahoo Entertainment with a laugh. I was like, ‘It’s true, it’s true.'”
Watch the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts cast and crew praise Pete Davidson’s performance
According to Caple, Davidson worked particularly hard on his alter ego’s more dramatic moments in the film’s third act. For most of the movie, Mirage is kind of a carefree robot, much like the person who voices him. But during the climactic battle between the righteous Autobots and the evil Terrorcons, the character must make a difficult choice that impacts the human he has befriended and sworn to protect, Noah Diaz. ‘Anthony Ramos.
“He didn’t really get too dramatic,” Caple says of Davidson, whose previous (human) performances include The King of Staten Island And Body Body Body. “So the most intimate parts of the third act of the movie were probably the hardest things. That’s what we spent the most time on because we were both trying to figure it out.”
While Ramos never acted opposite Davidson on set, he heard his co-star’s performance every time he re-recorded dialogue during post-production and gives the actor a big thumbs up. . “I was dubbing my voice and watching our scenes thinking ‘Pete is absolutely murder right away”, “the In the heights the stars are ecstatic. “He’s so funny and he’s so New Yorker. You could feel that Staten Island vibe about him. He’s super talented and perfect [for that role].”
But Davidson’s casting wasn’t guaranteed. Transformers Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura reveals Paramount wasn’t convinced Davidson fit Mirage’s profile. “It was definitely a conversation with the studio,” the producer recalls. “They were like, ‘We’ve never seen him in anything like this.’ They were looking at him from a traditional comedian role perspective, and Pete is not a traditional comedian. That’s what makes him unique.”
Caple lobbied for Davidson’s casting, and that enthusiasm won over Paramount. “I wanted an outcast and a rebel as the Autobot, and as we started looking for names [of actors], I saw Pete Davidson’s face on a card one day, and I said, ‘Pete Davidson feels like a rebel.’ The studio thought that was an interesting touch.”
To seal the deal, Caple convinced Davidson to audition for Paramount and says he more or less won the role on the spot. “He just killed it,” he says of that audition. “He was doing a bit of improv and freestyle and we incorporated that into the film as well,” the director said. “When we were in the cabin, he kept trying to make his jokes about the moment. Pete Davidson really did his thing as Mirage.”
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts now playing in theaters.