Brett Goldstein Only Had 2 Weeks to Train for His ‘Thor’ Cameo

Thor: Love and Thunder hugely expanded the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by confirming that the gods of pretty much every ancient mythology are real, not just Norse and Egyptian. In one of the movie’s major set-pieces, viewers were transported to Omnipotent City, a Mount Olympus-style metropolis ruled over Russell Crowe’s Zeus. And in the now-obligatory Marvel post-credit scene, we returned to the city’s ampitheater, where we were introduced to a new demigod: Hercules, played in a brief cameo by Brett Goldstein.

Goldstein, best known for portraying gruff soccer coach Roy Kent on Apple TV+ comedy Ted Lasso, recently revealed that the casting was almost as much of a surprise to him as it wa to viewers, telling The Playlist that he initially didn’t even know what his Zoom meeting with Taika Waititi was about, until the director summarized the post-credits scene in which he was to make his appearance as Hercules.

“And I went, ‘What?'” Goldstein said. “Just like, ‘Are you serious? Are you f**king with me? Is this a wind-up?’ So yeah, it was as surprising to me as I think it has been to other people.”

He added that as his appearance in the movie was so brief, he did not undergo the same kind of physical transformation that other actors do when they take on a superhero role. In fact, he was only given two weeks in which to get physically prepared:

“When I spoke to Taika, I said, ‘You know I’m basically like a skinny comedian?’ I said, ‘When is this filming?’ It was like in two weeks, and I was like, ‘I mean, I’ll do my best, but two weeks feels…’ I said, ‘He doesn’t have to be as big as Thor, does he?’ And look, on the day, I mean, I’m doing 400 pushups that day. I was fit to explode. I did the best I could on that day, yeah.”

Goldstein went on to joke that as and when he returns to the MCU with more screen-time, he’ll make sure to eat and train like Chris Hemsworth, saying: “I’m going to eat 30 chickens a day from now on; it will be fine.”