Sonic the Hedgehog 3 isn’t the only video game property Keanu Reeves worked on this year. He also had an appearance in Amazon’s Secret Level series, but what fans don’t know is that he was actually nursing an injury while shooting his episode.
According to series director Dave Wilson and creator Tim Miller, Reeves apparently ‘lived to the hype’ and toughed out all of his scenes for his Armored Core episode while he had injured his kneecap. In a recent interview with Collider, Wilson explained:
So, two weeks before filming, we get this email, and it’s like, “Dave, Tim, I got some bad news. I’ve fractured my kneecap,” and, and, blah, blah, blah. I’m skimming to the bottom of the email where he’s going to tell me he can’t do it, and he’s like, “But I’ve learned all my lines. I’m off book. I can take the brace off, and I can shoot for five minutes at a time…” And I was like, “Oh my God, he’s still going to do it.” And so I’m like, “Don’t worry about it. Keep the brace on. We’ll give your character a limp and a brace.”
While they were expecting to have Reeves shoot his part for a couple of days, Reeves apparently requested that they finish everything at that point, and he shot for 13 hours straight. Wilson continues:
… two hours in, I can tell it’s hurting, man. It’s very recent, and his knee’s about the size of Tim’s head. About two hours in, he’s like, “Dave.” And I’m like, “Do you want to come back tomorrow?” He’s like, “Let’s just shoot it all now.” And I’m like, “What?” And he shot for 13 hours straight with that brace, and he doesn’t leave set. He just nips out, has a cigarette, comes back in, and he’s like, “Let’s go again!”
We don’t know if Reeves would be willing to come back for another season of Secret Level, but so far, he’s been down to work on all kinds of video game properties. Besides Sonic, he’s also the face of the Cyberpunk 2077 game with his character Johnny Silverhand.
Admittedly, Secret Level didn’t earn the same level of acclaim as Love, Death and Robots, and a lot of criticism was aimed at the show being more action-focused—whereas LDR had a good mix of all kinds of genres. The good news is, a second season has already been greenlit, so Miller and his team can work on bringing more into the show that they haven’t done before.
Catch Secret Level now showing on Amazon Prime Video.
