TWISTED METAL

Anthony Mackie talks bringing Twisted Metal to TV and bringing Hollywood hype to his hometown.

BY BERNARD BOO

FEEL LIKE WE’RE IN A TIME where all of us are trying to not forget our childhood…. Twisted Metal is one of those forgotten gems that really brings you back to your youth.”

Hood-mounted Gatling guns, blood-splattered windshields, and a psychotic clown driving a deadly ice cream truck may seem like strange memories to file under the “childhood nostalgia” column. But for ’90s kids who loved Twisted Metal, like Anthony Mackie, the vehicular mayhem of the long-running PlayStation classic conjures warm and fuzzies in the most delightfully demented way.

When Mackie signed on to produce and star in Peacock’s TV adaptation of the game, he knew it would be a chance to pay homage to an era that meant a lot to him. “I was formed and defined by the ’90s,” he tells Den of Geek. “There was freedom of expression back then. It’s when a generation really found its voice. When I saw they were making a show about Twisted Metal, I had to be as much a part of it as I possibly could.”

With a story by Cobra Kai’s Michael Jonathan Smith (who Mackie refers to exclusively as “MJ”), the action comedy series centers on John Doe (Mackie), a “milkman” who traverses treacherous wastelands in his trusty-rusty Subaru, lovingly named “Evelyn,” to deliver precious cargo between walled-off cities in a post-apocalyptic United States, fending off bazooka-toting looters and marauders on the open road. John and the rest of the wastelanders are completely cut off from the prosperous pockets of civilization scattered across the map, but when he’s offered the rare opportunity to earn citizenship in New San Francisco in exchange for retrieving a mysterious package from New Chicago over 2,000 miles away, he embarks on the most dangerous mission of his life.

The original game, created by David Jaffe, wasn’t exactly narrative-forward, telling a loose story about a tournament hosted by a mysterious man called Calypso in which the victor is granted one wish. The show alters and expands on the lore extensively, though Mackie,

Smith, and the show’s writers—including Deadpool’s Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick—do preserve the irreverent humor and ultra-violence of the game while also celebrating the edgy, off-the-wall energy of the ’90s.

The story is inspired by the source material but not bound by it, and the creative process was liberating for Mackie and the team. “We had the opportunity to give the characters backstories and tie them together in a way the game didn’t,” the actor says. “The great thing about John is that we had 100 percent artistic freedom. Because we had that liberty, the writing team and I were able to develop and craft him to my sense of humor. He’s a very serious character at times, but there’s an absurdity to the world he lives in.”

Absurdity is certainly a core component of the show, with the gruesome spectacle of the car combat and the dialogue’s constant flurry of F-bombs ensuring the material is on-brand for the franchise. But there’s more humanity in John’s story than one might expect. Ostensibly, he’s a happy-go-lucky lone wolf who thoroughly enjoys his job and its spoils. And yet, there’s a family-sized hole in his soul that compels him to take on the suicide mission to New Chicago.

“I think MJ and the other writers gave John, and every character in the show, a very interesting arc,” Mackie says. “You can relate to all of the characters on the show. There’s not a good guy or a bad guy. When you’re in a situation of survival, everyone has a different vantage point they look at survival from. None of them are right or wrong. Each character has an argument that makes sense and that the audience can relate to.”

The most iconic character in the entire Twisted Metal universe is the maniacal nightmare clown Sweet Tooth, voiced by Will Arnett and played onscreen by AEW pro wrestler Joe Seanoa, a.k.a .Samoa Joe. Joe is an imposing presence, which Mackie can attest to, having shared a particularly physical casino fight scene with the hulking “Samoan Submission Machine.”

“He’s a wrestler in real life, so he doesn’t know his strength!” Mackie says with a smile. “Whenever he hit me or threw me or punched me, he literally beat the shit out of me! When he slammed my head against a damn video poker machine, the glass cracked. I was like, ‘Why?! Why would you do that that hard?!’ [Laughs] I have a newfound respect for pro wrestlers.”

In trying to flesh Sweet Tooth out for the show, Mackie and the writers designed him to embody the madness an entertainer like a clown would succumb to in this particular post-apocalypse. The show’s world “goes to shit” in the early aughts, so while the story takes place in the present day, outsiders like Sweet Tooth are still culturally stuck in a time when making mix CDs was a national pastime, and EB Games was a staple in malls across the country. “He’s this eccentric, crazy character with flaming hair and a leather chest harness, and we thought the audience would gravitate to that ridiculousness,” Mackie says with a chuckle. “He’s a 6 foot 3 clown who worships Sisqó.”

Sweet Tooth is one of the campiest characters on the show, but according to Mackie, the role required a highly sophisticated performance from Joe, who had to bring the character to life using physicality alone. “Samoa Joe is one of the most talented, amazing dudes I’ve ever met,” Mackie gushes. “What he was doing on the show was basically commedia dell’arte. He created this character with his body.”

Also featured in the cast is Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Encanto star Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Quiet, an original character who becomes a reluctant companion for John. She’s badass, hell-bent on revenge, and as her name suggests, she isn’t the talkative type, though that