Keanu Reeves has described jumping off a large-scale building 19 times while he shot The Matrix Resurrections.
The star has reprised his role of Neo for the fourth instalment of the sci-fi franchise, and in a recent interview he dug into the physical rigmarole that the part still requires. This included jumping off of a building that Reeves believed to be “around 46 stories” high.
“It’s Lana Wachowski and it’s The Matrix and you need natural light and you want to do it real,” he told host Stephen Colbert on The Late Show when he was asked why VFX wasn’t used instead.
“I mean, there’s wires,” he continued. “Carrie-Anne [Moss] and I grabbed hands and leapt off the building.”
“By the time you get there, my heart rate was a little raised,” he said of the experience. “But after the first time, you can’t think of the fear. You have to block that, or not block it, but deal with it, absorb it, and just be there, and do.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Reeves broke down the origin story of the Sad Keanu meme that took the internet by storm.
“I’m just eating a sandwich, man!” Reeves laughed when the image came up on screen. “Man, I’m eating a sandwich!”
Although he admitted that he “had some stuff going on” during the day that the paparazzi shot was taken, he mostly attributed his visible mood to hunger.
In addition to Reeves and Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lambert Wilson and Daniel Bernhardt will also reprise their roles for The Matrix Resurrections, with newcomers including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus. Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci and Telma Hopkins also star.
Some of the franchise’s former actors will not return, however, such as Laurence Fishburne and Gina Torres. Torres expressed disappointment in her exclusion from the new entry, while Fishburne said back in June that he was still unsure why Wachowski didn’t ask him to return.
Resurrections is the fourth film in the series of sci-films following the 1999 original and its two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, which were both released six months apart in 2003.
The Matrix Resurrections is released in UK cinemas on December 22, 2021. In the US it will also be released on HBO Max the same day.