ComingSoon editor-in-chief Tyler Treese spoke with Beast star Daniel MacPherson about his new mixed martial arts movie. MacPherson discussed his training for the role, his love of MMA, and working with Russell Crowe. The film is out in theaters starting today.

“After years away from the cage, a once-feared MMA champion is pulled back in for the fight of his life when his younger brother is put in danger. Reuniting with the trainer who once made him a legend, he commits to one final showdown against the reigning title-holder — a brutal fighter determined to dismantle the ex-champ’s legacy in front of the world. Pushed to his breaking point, the contender’s stakes are simple: win, or lose everything he’s built,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Australia has such a great history with MMA. Alexander Volkanovski is obviously the current champ at featherweight. Jack Della Maddalena was a champ. Elvis Sinosic, Mark Hunt, there’s a long history of veterans. What was your interest, before this film, in mixed martial arts in general?

Daniel MacPherson: I was a fan. I was a big fan, but I’d never trained and I’d never partaken. I’d watched. I was working and living around the world in the 2000s and whatnot. We came up in the Conor McGregor sort of era of pre-pandemic UFC. If you really want to go back to watching Kimbo Slice back in some of the really early days, back when you had to search on YouTube, and stuff like that, or even some of Jorge [Masvidal]’s really early, early background and stuff like that.

But I really didn’t understand it until I started training it for Beast, and once I started training it and understanding the intricacies and the artistry and the levels of it, only then did I go back and realize how incredible “GSP” was or how incredible some of those real pioneers of the sport were. How the sports evolved from very specific martial artists coming in and applying their trade and applying their specific martial art against others, to now the full-roundedness of MMA as a sport and as a specific sport separate from other martial arts.

It’s been so interesting seeing it expand, and people become so well-rounded because fighters really master everything. Wrestling, jiu-jitsu, boxing, Muay Thai. This was a tremendous commitment for you to undertake. What made you want to put years into work for this one role? Obviously, martial arts is a reward in and of itself, but can you speak to that dedication you showed here?

Look, I loved the script when I first got it, which was way back in 2022. Not only was it a man fighting for victory in a cage, it was a man fighting for identity. It was a man fighting for a purpose. It’s also a man fighting for his family and for his children and for his wife. All of that resonated with me. He’s got a great moral core, a great kind of traditional masculinity about him, which I loved. Then it’s not every day that Russell Crowe turns around and says, “Hey man, I’m gonna back you into the lead in a fight film, and we’re gonna go and make this thing.” I started training the next day.

Go back to 2022, I literally started at the beginning. I rang a buddy of mine who was a professional boxer. I said, “Man, I need, I need the best boxing coach in Sydney,” and he sent me to Graham Shaw. I said, “Graham, I’m making this movie,” and he looked at me, he was like, “You are gonna play a a fighter?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah,” and literally, “Teach me how to punch.” I started with punching, and it was as simple as that. Then I went to jiu-jitsu, and then I went to Muai Thai, and then I went to Thailand. Then I started putting all those together.

So it was the tiny, really specific building blocks, and then finally putting it all together. But it took me, thankfully, as the movie and Russell’s availability and all this sort of thing, and the finance and everything took on again, off again, over the course of three years. I ended up training for over three years to get to where we got. It’s a great blessing that we did. I wouldn’t have been able to pull off a character and a role and a performance like this, and I wouldn’t have been able to pull off the intensity and technical aspect of MMA that we’re really proud of.

You mentioned Russell Crowe. What a great training motivator. You don’t wanna let him down, right? I wanted to ask about just his intensity as a scene partner, because his pep talk scenes are so great in this film. What stood out about just getting the share scenes with one of Australia’s great actors?

Daniel MacPherson: Oh man. It was the third time we’d worked together. I remember how nervous I was the first time we worked together back in 2021. It was on a film called Poker Face. Russell was directing as well. I’ll never forget that. You fast-forward a couple of projects, and it’s late 2024, and we’re stepping on set with Beast. You don’t have time to be nervous. You don’t have time to not own the character. You just gotta back yourself and trust yourself.

He’s a great mentor. He is a great supporter. He elevates every set that he’s on, but when he’s screaming at you this far from you, you can’t help but scream back. That opening sequence wasn’t quite on the page when we, when we started filming that scene. On about the third take, he kind of let rip, and then I let rip, and the director went, “That’s it.” We were like, “Great. Give us one more.” So, the fourth take of that scene is the one that’s in the film that gives everybody goosebumps when they see it. Neck veins popping and spit and snot, and everybody wants to go to war after the first four minutes of this movie.

I could see people using that, like the hype themselves up for a workout. It’s a real phenomenal scene for sure.

I was just saying, I feel like it should be someone’s alarm clock. When your alarm goes off, that’s what I want to hear.

You guys got the film at a One Championship event. They put on some fantastic Muay Thai fights and a bunch of different martial arts. How was that experience of actually getting to go to the event and film there?

Daniel MacPherson: Absolutely extraordinary. One Championship we thought was a wonderful partner. Not only do we get to take the film up to Southeast Asia, to Bangkok and Thailand, a great kind of cityscape. Just add so much texture, color, and character to the third act of this film. But also, at One Championship, particularly, they have a real respect for the warrior ethos. There’s a real spirituality that comes in all that sort of Southeast Asian fighting that we thought was a really close fit for Patton James and for our film. So that worked really well. They were the perfect kind of partner for us.

But then we got to shoot there for a week. So, I got to walk out into the cage in front of 10,000 people at a World Championship event in Bangkok, Thailand, in the shape of my life and go through that. I’ll never get to experience anything like that again. They’re like, “What do you want your walkout song to be?” So I chose “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine, and I’ll never forget stepping up, and the lights come up, and 10,000 people start screaming. I still get goosebumps thinking about it, but it was so incredible to experience. It adds so much, not only authenticity, but it adds so much energy to the final fight. Particularly with that real cultural passion that the Thai people have for Muay Thai in particular, but for MMA and martial arts. It just added something so special that I don’t think we’ve seen on screen before.

That’s such a cool story. You hear about fighters; they struggle to retire because they miss that walk. I feel like you understand that now fully.

I’ve got the behind-the-scenes of that walk on my phone, and every time I flick every now and again, I see it. It’s pretty special. I’ve got to do some cool stuff in my career, but that’s pretty special.

Like so many of your country’s great actors, you went through the Australian show Neighbors, which is a soap opera, and I’ve noticed that a lot of people who come through soaps just have this incredible work ethic. I feel like that comes from doing an episode every day. Can you speak to just how that role early on kind of shaped you into the actor you are today?

No, you’re, you’re exactly right. Neighbors and Home and Away were the two soap operas that exist in Australia. To be fair, they probably exist in a way that in the UK a lot of actors would go outta high school and go to drama school. Here, and probably the US as well, going back historically, we had less access, probably, to drama school. There was a main one in Sydney, NIDA, and there was a West Australian one, WAAPA, over there. So, one of the easiest paths for a lot of young actors was just to go straight into the soaps.

What it teaches you is preparation, because you might be shooting 15 scenes a day. It teaches you punctuality because if you are not there on time, you get yelled at, and it’s a high-turnover machine. It teaches you to deal with the press and publicity, which goes hand in hand with a career in front of the camera. You deal with the pressure of having to perform every day, five days a week, churning out five episodes a week of high-turnover TV. So, it’s a great training ground. It’s a great introduction to the industry for so many actors. You walk down the hallways of those studios, and you see all the faces that come through there. It’s extraordinary.

Thanks to Daniel MacPherson for taking the time to talk about Beast.