“I think the opening line was like, ‘Cyrus enters, shirt off, does push ups and applies oil.'”
Kevin Hart leads the cast of Netflix’s latest big-budget action thriller, Lift – but the comedian has revealed that the finished film looked rather different from the one he originally signed up for.
Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com about what first attracted him to the project, Hart joked that the thing that initially grabbed his attention was a scene that didn’t make it into the final cut.
“They took the reason why I jumped at it out,” he said. “The first script that I originally read… it opened and I think the opening line was like, ‘Cyrus enters, shirt off, does push ups and applies oil.’ And I was like, ‘This is for me.’”
“And that’s what got me first. But then they changed that, they changed the pages. So, what I initially jumped at the project for was taken out.
“And then what was put in there was great, which was just, like, an action thing, you know, great story, and we’re in all these great places, but it started off as a jailhouse project.
“So to see it change – of course, change for the better. But when I first started on, it was like, ‘Opens, he’s fresh out of prison.’”
Meanwhile, Loki star Gugu Mbatha-Raw – one of many big names in the film’s international supporting cast – also revealed what first stood out to her, mentioning one of the movie’s exciting locations as a major pull.
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“I mean, honestly, Italy initially,” she said. “The opening sequence in Venice, like, boat chase on the Grand Canal, the fact that my character is an Interpol agent… you know, she’s sort of powerful, but the dynamic between our characters, I really loved on the page.”
She added: “The fact that she’s sort of the goody-goody and he’s sort of, you know, the bad boy criminal. And their history – I just loved that dynamic.”
Filming in Venice might have been one of the major draws of the film, but Hart also revealed that one scene shot in the historic Italian city almost ended in disaster – explaining that he had even feared for his life.
“We hit a wave a little high, and the boat came down and, like, yanked real quick,” he said. “You see the camera guy go to the side, F [Gary Gray, director] almost went outside of the boat.
“I remember specifically saying to myself, ‘Well, this is it, this is death – this is how we’re all gonna do it.’”
Lift is streaming on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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