Never Back Down may be the last time we see Sean Faris playing a high school student. The 26-year-old actor is ready to move on to roles closer to his real age, but the prospect of starring in a movie about high school students involved in Mixed Martial Arts was too good to pass up. “I had never trained in MMA before, but I was a huge fan,” said Faris. “I followed UFC for about eight years now. I’ve been watching it every week, all the major pay-per-views, all that stuff I’ve seen, so I loved it. I was a huge fan of it. Love it. I’ve got my favorite fighters.”
In the dramatic film Never Back Down, Faris stars as high school football standout Jake Tyler, a troubled teen who’s quick to use his fists. Jake’s mom hopes he’ll be able to start fresh when she packs up and moves the family to Orlando, Florida so that Jake’s younger brother can attend a prestigious tennis school. But trouble comes looking for Jake before he even gets a chance to settle in. A lot of students at his new school are into Mixed Martial Arts, and high school bully Ryan McDonald (Cam Gigandet) has seen an online video of Jake beating up a kid during a football game, knows Jake’s a brawler and wants to pull him into the sport – whether Jake wants to become involved or not.
One on One with Sean Faris
I have to admit I don’t know much about the sport. Are there actually rules?
“Oh yeah. Well, not in our film. In our film the only rules are no eye-gouging and no biting and one other thing… I’m not sure, not really, the real rules of what happens in MMA tournament fighting. But our film’s about an underground club, it’s an underground fight club so it’s not the same.”
What do you think Mixed Martial Arts fighters and fans will think of the film bending the rules?
“Well the thing is it’s an underground fight club and it’s not a real tournament thing, so I don’t think they really mind. Bas Rutten, he’s a former champion - now he’s a trainer. He trains Kimbo Slice who just won in Miami - I saw that fight - and Frank Shamrock, he’s a pro, Kimbo’s a pro, they’ve all seen it. They’ve all given their word - they think it’s great.”
How’d you get prepared physically to take on this role?
“Oh man, we trained for six hours a day, six days a week for about two to three months. Yeah. It was pretty ridiculous. And then we would also weight train. I went from, well, see I should have lost weight considering how much you’re training but they had me eating so much food every day that I actually put on 15 pounds of lean muscle.”
Once the film was over did you keep up with any of the training?
“I work out still all the time. The fight training I have not been able to keep up only because of my schedule.”
So you wouldn’t be adverse to doing another martial arts-type movie?
“No, not right away I don’t want to do one. I definitely do one down the line a year or two. For sure.”
Was most of your training to get the moves down or build up strength?
“It’s fight training, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Taekwondo are the fight styles that we trained in. And then we did lots of stretching, lots of conditioning, just to get our bodies in enough shape to where we could shoot 12 hour days. The conditioning was designed to help us recover.”
Recover?
“We would go really hard for 10 minutes and then rest for like three or four, and then go really hard for 10 minutes and then rest for three or four. We got our bodies used to recovering and that down time so we can get up and go again. We also did all sorts of ground work. We also did a lot of fight choreography. Every day would be an hour, hour and a half of fight choreography, which is where it’s like basically setting up the fight - all the moves. It’s kind of like doing a dance, choreographing a dance.”
You worked out with the guy you starred opposite…
“Yes, Cam Gigandet.”
How tough was it to work out with Cam, become friends, and then turn around and be adversaries in the movie?
“Well it all plays into it, I think. You know, because he’s learning his part, I’m learning my part, and I hate it when his character’s beating up my character. He hates it when my character’s beating up his character. So you develop a little animosity there but nothing for real, though.”
There are a lot of training sequences in the film using punching bags, throwing bricks, etc. How close is that training regimen to what an actual MMA fighter goes through?
“I don’t know. I know the ladder climbing thing is real. The kettle bell, which is the thing where I was tapping it, that’s totally real. They use that so much.”
And you have a sports background.
“Yeah, I’ve actually been in sports since I was like four years old. First sport I ever played was soccer, then baseball and football. I played football for years in Texas and then I moved to Cleveland, Ohio and I played basketball in Ohio. I played more football, more soccer, and then essentially in high school I started diving.”
That’s a real switch in sports, from football and soccer to diving.
“I was always like a summertime diver. I taught myself everything I knew up until a certain point and the football coach came to me one day and said, ‘I hear you’re really good on the diving board. We need a diver really bad, will you please come dive for us?’ And I said, ‘All right, cool.’ So basically all I had to do was learn how to clean it all up. I came in like my first meet sort of halfway through the season. I took third place my first meet and I said I would never lose another meet again. I took first place every meet I was in after that. And then I actually having dove halfway through the season, I qualified for city. I went to city and then I qualified for the regionals and went to regionals.”
Page 2: On Sports, Acting, MMA, and Keeping Focused
