Masters of the Universe comes out in theaters on June 5. It stars Nicholas Galitzine as Adam/He-Man, Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms, Camila Mendes as Teela, Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, Morena Baccarin as the Sorceress, and Jared Leto as Skeletor. If you’ve seen any of the trailers or are familiar with MOTU in general, you’ll know that He-Man is pretty ripped. Last year, Galitzine made an Instagram post that mentioned he’d been doing intense training for the role. During the movie’s premiere on Monday, E! News caught up with Galitzine on the red carpet and asked him about his health and fitness routine. Galitzine revealed that, before production started, he basically had to exercise and eat nonstop to bulk up. At one point, he was eating 5,000 calories a day. From E! News:
“It was an every day a week thing,” Nicholas exclusively told E! News’ Will Marfuggi of his fitness routine at the movie’s May 18 premiere. “It was a pretty short amount of time. You kind of would love to live in this character for a year beforehand but the training very much changed as the movie went on.”
“We started out really trying to pack on as much size as possible,” he added. “You know, having up to 5,000 calories sometimes, weightlifting for three hours a day and then we streamlined it.”
And it’s safe to say there were no days off.
“So, you’re shooting a scene,” the 31-year-old explained. “They say, ‘You have 10 minutes until the next set up,’ you run outside, you hop on the assault bike, run back in, shoot a scene again, and that kind of goes on for about five months.”
While the fitness side of the Red, White and Royal Blue star’s transformation was certainly challenging, managing his nutrition was a whole separate beast.
“We started shooting and then I had to cut while we were shooting, which is pretty insane,” he said of drastically lowering his caloric intake. “You have that brain fog. So, I definitely felt like that was a thing but especially when you’re doing these action set pieces, you’ve gotta have energy for it.”
“So, it was something I had to really work through on a day-to-day basis,” he added, “but I really enjoyed the challenge.”
But after the film wrapped, Nicholas’ next project—in addition to the upcoming Red, White and Royal Wedding—required different demands.
“I had another movie lined up straight away where I was playing a WWII soldier,” he explained, “and the director said, ‘I’ve got terrifying nightmares that you’re gonna show up on set on day one looking like He-Man. Can you just do nothing for the next three weeks?’”
“So, it was kind of music to my ears,” he quipped. “I’d lay on a couch, I ate potato chips and I said, ‘this is the kind of prep I love.’”
That is an intense diet and exercise plan. It reminds me of Hugh Jackman’s extreme diet regimen of eating up to 8,000 calories a day to bulk up to play Wolverine. Hopefully, Nicholas was working with experts to make sure he was doing it safely. It doesn’t sound pleasant to be training so much and then having to cut calories to the point where you’re getting brain fog. Based on the arms and abs that we see in the trailers, Galitzine clearly put in the work, though. For “work purposes,” I studied his body during the Adam scenes in the trailer. He looks less bulky in them. I’m guessing the He-Man scenes were shot in the early days of filming and he cut down on calories to lose some of the muscle for when he isn’t filled with the Power of Grayskull.
Masters of the Universe spent two decades in development limbo, and now that it’s finally been made, Amazon MGM Studios is going all out on promotion. The red carpet for their world premiere on Monday night transformed the TCL Chinese Theatre into a giant Castle Grayskull. On Tuesday night, they did a drone show in Los Angeles that set the world record for the most powerful drone show ever. The final trailer also came out on Wednesday. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun! I grew up watching He-Man and She-Ra, so I definitely plan on seeing this movie with my family.
Photos credit: Sadou Faye/Avalon and via YouTube
