Guardians of the Galaxy: Dave Bautista as Drax Interview

Disclaimer: I was provided on an all expense paid trip to screen the film and interview the cast. I was not paid for my opinion (nor did I need to be).

Perhaps you can relate to Dave Bautista who plays Drax in the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie that opened making $94 Million of Dollars this weekend! That is the largest weekend August opening and Dave Bautista had a HUGE part of this movie’s success. The reviews (not just mine) have been AMAZING! Bautista says that waiting for this film to come out has been the “longest months of his life”. My first experience seeing Bautista while in LA was when we were at the junket and 25 of us crazy bloggers were hanging out and about to sing Karaoke. Bautista and his crew walked right past us and smiled. So when he walked in to the room I imagined WWE…loud…extravert…funny…actor about to tell us what we wanted to hear. To my surprise, Dave was super humble, soft spoken, and really sweet.

Dave Bautista playing Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy…he nailed it! Like I mentioned in my TOP 10 Funniest Moments…any scene with Drax had me laughing a lot! I didn’t know if he would be very Pro-wrestler stereotypical muscle man when I watched the movie. He wasn’t. He also wasn’t in real life. Drax is an emotional character that holds a lot of revenge which is what keeps him going in life!

I learned that Mr. Bautista is very personal. All though he was getting interviewed by 25 bloggers he made it a point to share our pictures on his fan page and retweet as many of us after the interview. I guess he liked being in a room and interviewed by mostly moms and dads who just want to learn about his experience to share with our readers and our own families.

Here are the highlights to our interview:

Questions: How much did your WWE training help prepare you for this movie?

Dave: None, none at all. It’s weird because it’s so different.  I guess being athletic helped me a little bit.  I picked up on stuff kinda easy.  But still, it’s just so different from anything that I’d ever done.  We had really good stunt guys and kinda relied on them for their advice, and they showed me how to do stuff, and I would do it, I’d mess it up and they’d say, well, try it this way if it’s easier.  And I’d say no, I like the way you did it because it looks cool that way.  So just show me how to do it that way, and I’d just do it and do it until I picked up on it.

Question:   Were you in makeup for hours at a time?

Dave:   Yeah, it typically took about four hours to apply and about an hour and a half to take off.  But it varied.  When we first started, it was longer to put it on.

Question:   Did makeup limit your movements at all? 

Dave:   A little bit, yeah, because there was all the prosthetics, they were all glued on.

Question:   What do you think attracted you most to the role of Drax?

Dave:  Oh, it’s easy.  It was because he’s a nut job.  It’s because I’ve been wanting to do a role that wasn’t…noted.  You know, it’s multi-layered, so a character with a little bit of an emotional range, which is something that I needed for my career really bad.  I think people have a certain perception of me leaving wrestling that they just saw me as that guy, and I’m really not that guy at all.

Question: Did you have any heroes growing up?

Dave: So I always feel guilty when I’m asked this question because I’m a Marvel guy, but Batman was my guy.  Like, I have the whole Dark Knight series and also when I was a very young kid for some reason Aquaman was my favorite.  Yeah, and so I always feel bad answering, but those, that’s the honest answer, yeah.

Question: How did this role compare with your expectations on what it would be like?

Dave: It’s weird.  I really didn’t have any expectations…it’s just kinda starting to hit me how big it actually is.  I knew that the role would change my career and change my life.  I mean, really pounding the pavement for years since I left wrestling.  It was hard for me to leave wrestling because that was my bread and butter.  I mean, and that’s how I made a career; how I made a living for ten years. And it was scary leaving it behind.

Question: Do you have a favorite moment while filming?

One day James, I think for his own amusement decided to make the whole cast and crew dance.  It was weird because there was the huge outdoor scene and there must have been two hundred extras on set, and for some reason, it just turned into a big thing.

So there was the part where Star-Lord was bent on- to distract Ronan, was doing a dance.  Okay, so we were shooting that, and it was all those extras on set.  So when we were shooting it, Chris started doing his thing, and then he pointed to Ronan, and Ronan started dancing.  I wasn’t aware of what was going on.  I had no idea.

And, uh, I was watching him and I thought, okay, you know, that’s Lee.  He’s messing around.  But then he point back to Chris, and then Chris pointed- and so everyone’s dancing, and I was like, what the hell.  And then I went, like, oh no.  So Chris points to me, and I was like, god damn.  So I did some big goofy [thing], and then I pointed back to him, and then James- I could hear James laughing, and he starts saying, uh, okay background- extras, start dancing, and literally, it turned into, like, three hundred people.

And it was like, okay, crew, dance, and then get everybody just dancing, so it literally it turned into this big rave.  It was hysterical.

Question:   Do you see yourself doing anything other than action?

Dave: Well, yeah, and that’ a weird thing because I never set out to be an action star. I think most people think that I’ll lean that way because my background in wrestling and because of the way I look.

Question: Did you have a hard time keeping a straight face with your line?

Dave: Yes…Chris is so funny.  He’s just so funny, and it’s really hard keeping a straight face with that guy around. Especially when he’s just, …like stuff that’s off the cuff, and he’s just kinda improving it, and it’s so funny, man.  So yeah, it was a lot of laughs…I mean, literally, we were crying; we were laughing so hard.

—We then all posed for a group picture.

The movie is rocking the box office so if you haven’t gone to see it…definitely a movie you will want to go to the theater and watch. Don’t wait for the movie to be out on Netflix…you will be waiting a long time.

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor,
Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team—the Guardians of the Galaxy. An
action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel
Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object -21-14
of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain
with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is
forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits—Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon,
Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the
Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the
cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand—with the
galaxy’s fate in the balance.
Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which first appeared in comic books in Marvel Super-Heroes,
Issue #18 (Jan. 1969), stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, featuring Vin Diesel as
Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou,
with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Nova Prime and Benicio Del Toro as The Collector.
James Gunn is the director of the film with Kevin Feige, p.g.a., producing. Louis D’Esposito, Alan
Fine, Victoria Alonso, Jeremy Latcham, Nik Korda and Stan Lee serve as executive producers.
Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”