The Expendables brings together the biggest stars in the action genre, and it’s no surprise that sometimes they butt heads. In a new interview this week, Dolph Lundgren shared a story about a tense moment between him and Sylvester Stallone. Lundgren admitted that emotions ran high and things almost got physical between him and Stallone.
“We had some good times and bad times, kinda like family to some degree,” Lundgren said on the latest episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger. His story came specifically from the set of The Expendables in 2010 – the first in the franchise. However, it built on the history he and Stallone had going all the way back to Rocky IV in 1985. He said: “[Stallone] was very harsh on me in a scene in Expendables 1, where he kinda yelled at me in front of the whole crew and had me do about 20 takes on a scene.”
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“It was like, ‘My grandmother could do it better than that! What the f-, what are you doing?’” Lundgren recalled. “You know, basically in front of everybody. And there was press there that day too, international press… We took a lunch break and I remember, I was kind of in tears. I was really upset.”
“I called my wife at the time, and I basically just told her, ‘If he says one more word, I’m gonna knock him out, and f- this movie, I’m outta here. I’m just gonna punch him out and f—-ing leave,’” Lundgren said. He added that he wasn’t the only one on edge, as he returned to set to find that “people felt it wasn’t such a good vibration.” Luckily, Stallone himself was the one to extend an olive branch and de-escalate the situation.
“Then I had a tap on the back and it was Sly,” Lundgren said. “He was like, ‘Uh, I’m sorry about that. Let’s just do another take and let’s just keep moving on.’ And we’ve had a few run-ins over the years, but what can I say, he’s a crazy Italian. I think he knows that I’ve always respected him and loved him, and I think that’s why we’re still friends.”
Lundgren played Ivan Drago – one of the most iconic rivals in the Rocky franchise, setting him and Stallone up for a combative relationship for years to come. In 2020, Stallone revealed that Lundgren had actually put him in the hospital during the filming of Rocky IV. He told The Hollywood Reporter that he had told Lundgren not to hold back, saying: “Just go out there and try to clock me; for the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all.”
Lundgren confirmed that story later, saying: “All I did was obey orders. He was the boss. I did what he told me.” Stallone was reportedly in the hospital for nine days at the time, and perhaps that was on his mind when he mended fences with Lundgren in 2010. The Expendables is available to rent or buy in digital stores, but is not currently included in any subscription-based streaming catalogs in the U.S.
