Last August, action vet Jeremy Renner revealed that three days into shooting his new movie Tag, he broke his arms—both of them!—during a stunt gone terribly wrong. The accident forced the movies effects teams to cover his now-broken limbs in sleeves, and use some C.G.I. magic to mask his injuries.
The news likely sent a shiver down the spine of Henry Cavill, the current reigning champion of ludicrous C.G.I. (While re-shooting (Justice League, Cavill was contractually forbidden to shave off a mustache he was growing for another movie, so the effects team had to erase his facial hair using digital wizardry; the end result was very awkward.) Now, though, Cavill and his infamous mustache can take a little breather, as Renner has revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that his arms were were only C.G.I.d in a single Tag scene.
As the actor explains it, the accident occurred during a stunt in which Renner was supposed to jump off a stack of chairs about 20 feet high. The rigging for the chairs broke, and Renner quickly plummeted to the ground. While he did feel pain, he didnt realize how badly he had damaged his arms—so then he did the stunt again.
“Then I realized, I think somethings wrong, so I went to the hospital, and they said it was broken, so I got them wrapped up and then I went back to work and did everything I could do to continue on as we did,” Renner said. But he couldnt take the cast off the next day: “They had to put like a clean sleeve over my arm, because I didnt want to take it off right after I just broke it. I needed it to set. I wanted the bone to set. So I think they had to C.G.I. my arm or something in just that one scene. But the rest of it, you know, it all went on O.K.”
As an investigation from the Ringer recently determined, you cant quite spot the C.G.I. arm in the trailer. But you can see a peek of Renners cast on his right arm at the 1:17 mark, when hes flinging donuts at Ed Helms.
Tag, by the way, is based on a true story of adult friends who go to extraordinary lengths to play a month-long game of tag each year. Renners character is the O.G. player, a tag assassin whos never been tagged himself. In the E.W. interview, he shared that hes healing, but not quite at full strength yet.
“I havent been doing any training or anything, but I think Ill probably get back and start actually doing something really physical,” he said. The most “upsetting” thing about all this, however, was when he realized he “couldnt pick up my daughter . . . but once I was able to do that, then I was healed in my mind.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:The Must-See Looks from the Extremely Fashionable Oceans 8 PremiereYohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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