The Iron Claw's Holt McCallany On Playing Wrestling Legend Fritz Von Erich - Exclusive
In the new movie "The Iron Claw," veteran character actor Holt McCallany plays Fritz Von Erich, the tough-as-nails owner of regional Texas wrestling promotion World Class Championship Wrestling and the domineering patriarch of the famous Von Erich wrestling family.
During their heyday in the early 1980s, under the tutelage of their father (a retired wrestler himself and a legend in the business), brothers Kevin (Zac Efron), David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), and Mike (Stanley Simons) were among the most competitive wrestlers in the sport (a fifth brother, Chris, also wrestled but is not portrayed in the film).
Yet a combination of injuries, mental issues, and the pressure to perform led to unthinkable tragedy, with Kevin being the only one of the Von Erich siblings still alive today. Written and directed by Sean Durkin, "The Iron Claw" chronicles the rise and fall of this legendary family, with McCallany giving a sometimes frightening yet nuanced performance as Fritz, whose unshakable veneer of "manhood" was both a source of strength and harm for his boys.
McCallany, whose long list of credits includes films like "Fight Club," "Nightmare Alley," "Three Kings," and "Wrath of Man," is probably best known as FBI Special Agent Bill Tench on the Netflix crime drama "Mindhunter." He tells Wrestling Inc. in our exclusive interview that playing Fritz Von Erich presented its own unique challenge. "He is, I think, an icon in the wrestling world," McCallany says. "And I wanted to do him justice."
Holt McCallany did not come into The Iron Claw cold
What was your knowledge or familiarity with the wrestling world in general and with the Von Erich family before you took this on?
Holt McCallany: Well, look, I'm a lifelong fan of combat sports. That's my thing. So a lot of experience in amateur boxing, and a lot of training in mixed martial arts. I was a wrestling fan, but I had never actually trained as a wrestler. So the first thing that I did when I got the role was I found a wrestling school in Brooklyn. It's run by a guy named Johnny Rodz, he calls himself The Unpredictable Johnny Rodz, and he was actually someone who had wrestled Kevin Von Erich in Madison Square Garden. When I went into his office and I said, "I'm going to play Fritz Von Erich," he said, "Oh, you mean The Iron Claw?" And I was like, "Yeah, I mean The Iron Claw."
So he gave me a lot of his time and really, really coached me and really, really helped me because it's a lot harder than it looks. It requires tremendous athleticism, but also a lot of technique, and you either know the technique, or you don't. So I worked with him, then we went to Baton Rouge, and we had the benefit of a great wrestler and a great choreographer named Chavo Guerrero, who comes from a famous wrestling family. I was able to continue with the benefit of Chavo's help and his wisdom to refine the character. But I was very much of the mindset that not only did I need to wrestle well, but I need to wrestle well in the style of Fritz.
Different wrestlers have different styles, different identities. Fritz was a big, strong guy, and in the wrestling game, they call a guy like that stiff, which means that he's not there necessarily to take it easy on you. In fact, there were certain wrestlers in his era that didn't want to wrestle Fritz Von Erich, because they said, "No, I'm just going to get injured." You know what I mean? "He's too tough, he's rough in there. Don't bring me Fritz." So that's where the journey began for me, just doing enough training and learning enough about the sport so that I could feel within myself that I had earned the right to walk out there in front of the cameras and play a professional wrestler, and specifically play Fritz Von Erich.
Playing a real vs. fictional person
How does your process differ when you're portraying a real person rather than a fictional character? Is it easier or more difficult? Were you able to talk to Kevin and get some insight into what Fritz was like?
So I'll answer that question in two parts. The first thing is that it is more difficult when you're playing a real person because you feel a responsibility. He still has family, he still has friends, he still has colleagues that are still... Even though Fritz died in 1997, there are still a lot of people, including Kevin Von Erich, who knew him very well. And he's a guy for whom volumes have been written. He's, I think, an icon in the wrestling world, and I wanted to do him justice. So I couldn't meet with him, but I did ask to meet with Kevin. And sadly, I couldn't get authorization to do that. There are reasons for that that frankly were hard for me to accept, and I would probably be indiscreet if I got too into too many details about why the studio felt that I shouldn't meet with Kevin Von Erich.
But if you can't meet with the guy that you're playing, the person that you want to meet with is somebody who knew him really well. So for example, when I did a television show called "Mindhunter" for Netflix, I was playing a character that was based on a former FBI agent named Robert Ressler. And my co-star, a very talented actor named Jonathan Groff, was playing a character that was based on his partner, John Douglas, who wrote the book "Mindhunter." Robert Ressler died in 2013, so I couldn't meet with Robert, but John Douglas is still alive. So I said, "Even though I'm not playing Douglas, I'm still going to go to Virginia, and I'm going to spend a weekend with him and his family, and I'm going to pick his brain, and I'm going to learn everything that I can learn from him about who Robert really was."
You can read about him, you can watch certain interviews, and you can gain a lot that way, but it's very much an advantage for an actor to have access to someone who knew the character intimately. And obviously [with Fritz], that's Kevin. I did make the request to meet with Kevin, but sadly, I wasn't able to meet with Kevin until last night for the first time. But I saw a video clip of Kevin being interviewed just after the first time that he had ever seen the film, and he said, "I didn't think they would be able to find an actor to play Fritz, but they found one. He was the right guy." And that meant the world to me because he knew his dad. If he was comfortable with my interpretation of his father, then I must have been on the right track.
How actors and wrestlers are alike
We've seen people from the wrestling world cross over into the acting world: Dave Bautista, John Cena, The Rock. What would you say are the similarities between acting and wrestling?
Well, look, if you're going to be a star in the world of professional wrestling, it's not just athleticism and technique and endurance. You absolutely have to have those things. But it's also charisma and personality and the ability to create a character that's going to capture the imagination of the wrestling fans. They call professional wrestling sports entertainment, and the entertainment component of that is crucially important. There are some tremendously talented college wrestlers, Division I wrestlers, Olympic wrestlers, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can come and be a star in the WWE because much of it is performative.
You have to be able to create a character, and you have to be able to go out there and play that character for the fans. And in that sense, there are some very real similarities between what they do and what we do. And in fact, I'll even go further. I would say that if you had to make me choose and say, "Are they closer to actors, or are they closer to athletes?" — because they're both — I would say at the end of the day, they're closer to actors. Because if you don't have that ability to create a character that people are going to respond to, you are not going to become a star in the world of professional wrestling.
"The Iron Claw" is now in theaters.