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Into the ring: The Iron Claw stars talk dropkicks and their emotional wrestling drama

Posted: Nov 7th 2023 By: Devan Coggan

The stars of The Iron Claw may not be blood relatives, but spending an afternoon with them feels a lot like hanging out with three actual brothers. In between takes at their EW cover shoot in late October, Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson have an easy camaraderie — finishing each other's sentences and walking together in step as they navigate a dusty mountain road above a Simi Valley horse ranch at sunset.

As with all siblings, spiritual or otherwise, there's plenty of good-natured ribbing — sometimes literally. Around lunchtime, a crew member hands Efron, White, and Dickinson a plate of ribs to eat on camera, and before long, all three are coated in a fine layer of barbecue sauce. But even as they poke fun at the stains on each other's shirts, they really just seem content to hang out. Later (after a change of clothes), they sit down for an interview, and when asked how they trained to play members of the legendary Von Erich wrestling family in the new biopic, they mostly just want to heap praise on one another.

"I was blown away on the first day that you guys came to work," Efron, 36, marvels. "You were jumping off ropes and doing huge hits."

"We had some time [training] in L.A.," White, 32, replies. "But I don't know, Zac, I never saw you not good at anything."

Dickinson, 27, admits to occasionally feeling silly in the ring, especially when their wrestling coach told them to go home and punch pillows for practice. But the British actor's onscreen brothers won't stand for any self-deprecation. "From the moment you come out, you're just doing heavy drops on the mat," Efron tells him, his voice tinged with eldest brother pride, not unlike the Von Erich brother he plays in the film. "And your claw is killer."

That fraternal bond serves them well in The Iron Claw (out Dec. 22), the highly anticipated A24 drama about one of wrestling's most iconic dynasties. The film focuses on four of the six Von Erich brothers — Kevin (Efron), David (Dickinson), Kerry (White), and Mike (Stanley Simons) — who built a wrestling empire in the 1970s and '80s, led by their domineering father Fritz (Mindhunter's Holt McCallany). But even as they rose to international fame, the family struggled both in and outside of the ring. Five of the Von Erich brothers (all except Kevin) died young, succumbing to health issues, tragic accidents, or suicide. The back-to-back deaths sparked rumors of a family curse — a cautionary tale of how sometimes success can exact a brutal price.

"It just doesn't seem like this could all happen to one family," Efron tells EW, perched on a hay bale next to Dickinson and White. "There's a huge element of the movie that's, of course, about wrestling and the showmanship aspect. But really, at its core, this movie's an incredible story about family, love, loss, and ultimately the triumph of a man who tries to break the cycle of this crazy curse."

"It's like a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tale," Dickinson adds. "And it's all true."

Director Sean Durkin, who also wrote the script for The Iron Claw, is a self-professed wrestling nerd with long-held dreams of bringing the Von Erich story to the screen. The filmmaker of The Nest got hooked on wrestling as a child of the 1980s and '90s in England. Whenever American stars would make the trip across the pond, he would beg his father to take him to a match. It was while scanning the racks of wrestling videos at his local video store that he first encountered the Von Erichs. One of Durkin's earliest memories is watching (and rewatching) Kevin leap off the top rope with his signature bare feet in footage from an old National Wrestling Alliance match.

Then he came to learn of the Von Erich curse. Durkin's parents took their 11-year-old to dinner every Saturday at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and their son would always stop at the newsstand across the street to pick up the newest issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. One day, he opened his usual copy and learned that Kerry Von Erich had died at the age of 33. Durkin had seen Kerry wrestle in person, and the golden-haired Texan seemed immortal in the ring. "I still remember that night," he says now. "I remember how I felt, and how I'd heard that the other brothers had died. It just really hit me."

The Von Erich story stayed with him through 2015, when he began researching and writing a film about the family. (He eventually reached out to Kevin Von Erich, now 66. Although the former wrestler was not involved in the production, he and Durkin have since become close.) Docuseries such as Vice's Dark Side of the Ring have explored the Von Erich story before, but The Iron Claw takes a deep dive into the family dynamics, from the brothers' relationship with their wrestling-legend father and devout Christian mother (played by Maura Tierney) to Kevin's marriage to wife Pam (Lily James).

Durkin notes that wrestling is a notoriously private affair, one of the only sports where persona and mythology matter as much as the athletic feats. The Von Erichs were keenly aware of how they presented to the public, and even their moniker is a stage name: The boys' father was born in Texas as Jack Adkisson Sr., but early in his career, he began wrestling as a fake German villain, adopting the name Fritz Von Erich.

Like most wrestlers of the time, the Von Erichs rarely shared their struggles publicly, preferring to maintain their image as an unstoppable family force. With The Iron Claw, Durkin wanted to peel back the personas, imagining how these men might cope with the pressures of fame or how their formidable father pitted them against one another. "Especially back then, wrestlers didn't talk about wrestling," Durkin explains. "It was all treated as fact and real. Those lines between the persona in the ring and out of the ring, they weren't there. It was all persona, all the time."

After Kerry mangled his foot in a motorcycle accident in 1986, eventually requiring an amputation, he would wear boots in the ring to disguise his prosthetic. Having to dramatize this accident in the film, White remembers Durkin showing him footage of Kerry in a hospital bed, speaking to press shortly after the crash. The wrestler appears cheery, but White could see the exhaustion on his face while his father put on a show for the media.

"It's like, 'There's nothing to worry about. He's going to get out there and perform.' But you could see how he just had no idea whether he would be able to do this," the actor explains. "The fact that he powered through that and continued to compete, that video alone speaks volumes to the sort of man that he was."

All of the actors pored over archival footage of the Von Erichs, paying particular attention to how Kevin, David, Kerry, and Mike cultivated their on-camera personalities. (Durkin says he chose to omit the youngest Von Erich brother, Chris — who died by suicide when he was 21 — purely to keep the film's length manageable.)

"The boys are all very still and quite stoic at times," Efron says of watching the Von Erichs on screen. "But I think it's a bit of a defense mechanism they built up. They put these walls up to the outside world in order to stay strong enough to persevere through everything they had to do. They had to be perfect all the time."

Before filming, Efron, White, Dickinson, and Simons had never set foot in a wrestling ring — in fact, they knew little to none about the wrestling world at all. Durkin recruited pro wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr. to train the actors and serve as the film's official wrestling consultant. (Guerrero also appears on screen, facing off against Kevin as the Sheik.) The actors were in the gym months before filming started, Guerrero grilling them on proper wrestling terminology and teaching them the nuances of a dropkick. They spent days just learning how to properly fall on their back, before graduating to flying leaps.

"We have some pretty funny iPhone footage of us seeing our wrestling for the first time," Efron says, laughing.

"I was like, 'Oh, that's what it looks like,'" White says with a grimace. "'Got some work to do.'"

Perhaps the trickiest move to perfect was the titular Iron Claw. The Von Erich family's signature move requires a wrestler to grip his opponent's head and squeeze with all five fingers — something the actors say is easier said than done.

"I felt like I was complaining a lot throughout the process, but it did hurt!" Dickinson admits, as his costars nod in agreement. "It's harder when you can't squeeze someone's head for real, so you have to create the idea that you are inflicting pain with just the squeeze of your hand and the shake. After a while, your forearms are cramping up, and you feel silly, like 'My arm! I can't do this anymore!'"

After months of training and perfecting their moves, the actors finally stepped into the arena, or rather an old furniture showroom near Baton Rouge, La., where the production team built a replica of the Sportatorium, the Von Erichs' home coliseum in Texas. The crew then filled the stands with hundreds of rowdy extras. Durkin remembers filming one early fight, where Kevin faces off against the Sheik and Skandor Akbar: When the actors playing Kevin's opponents walked out, the entire crowd erupted in boos.

"We're not rolling," Durkin recalls. "This was just actors walking into the ring. But both of them started playing back to the crowd, swatting the crowd away and antagonizing them. From the second the wrestlers stepped out there, it was on."

Instead of shooting short sequences or individual moves, Durkin let the camera run, and the actors wrestled entire matches from start to finish. (Efron says things got so intense that he's surprised no one ever lost a wig: "I'm shocked they stayed on! We put those things through hell!") Between the lengthy takes and the roar of the crowd, every hit felt 100 percent real.

"Those background performers made me feel like I belonged there," White says. "Leading up to those wrestling sequences, that's probably when I was feeling most insecure. It takes such confidence and skill to walk into a ring like that and perform."

"The crowd was an element that I did not predict," Efron admits.

"It was like an element of theater," Dickinson adds. "When you've got an audience, it changes the way you throw yourself into it."

Playing the hulking Von Erichs required bulking up — which meant consuming thousands of calories a day. Efron is no stranger to transforming his body for a role, especially after 2017's Baywatch, but all four worked to pack on the muscle. White shakes his head at the memory of their diet. "I was just eating frozen turkey patties and avocados and protein shakes and waffles and almond butter," he says. Sometimes the four brothers would go out to dinner, and together, they'd order a minor mountain of food.

"Jeremy, thankfully, had just done The Bear," Simons, 22, says of the culinary TV star. "So, we'd go to restaurants and [the employees] would be like, 'Oh my gosh, it's Jeremy!' and bring out a free dish. We were eating a lot."

Through marathon workouts and marathon meals, the actors formed a quick bond — quicker than Simons expected. "Every time I was in a scene with them, it felt right," the Australian-born actor says. "It felt like we were brothers. Sean was really open about improvising and letting us just do our own things in some takes. Obviously, we were following the script, but other times, we got to just mess around as brothers." Some of his favorite days were when Durkin captured footage of the actors just floating down a river together or driving around in the family's pickup truck. Much of the film takes place at the Von Erich family home, and the production team filled the house with '80s gym equipment. In between takes, the four brothers would wander over to the home gym together, squeezing in a few reps before Durkin called "action."

Efron, Dickinson, and White hope that when audiences sit down in the theater, that onscreen bond feels as real as it did on set. They also hope the film pays proper tribute to the sport they've grown to love. (When EW spoke to them in October, Efron hadn't yet met the real Kevin Von Erich, and he was anxiously awaiting the wrestler's opinion on the film. We've since heard he gave a glowing review.) After spending so many long days in the ring, they're permanent wrestling fans. But would they ever want to step into the ring for real?

"Oh, I would jump in," White replies immediately.

"I would love to," Dickinson agrees. "Do you remember at the end of the shoot? We were like, 'Should we try and do this for real?'"

"We went to Sean and were like, 'Sean, call them! Tell them we're ready!'" White recalls.

"Yeah, call WWE!" Efron chimes in. "Say we're going to do it!"

The three burst into laughter, already imagining a future of spandex and dropkicks. There's a brief pause before Dickinson turns to the others with a slightly more serious look. "Honestly," he says slowly, "would you do it if they asked you?"

White gives an immediate "F--- yeah," vigorously nodding his head. He and Dickinson then look at Efron, who stops to consider and grins. "Only if all you guys were there."