Keanu Reeves may be the face of Johnny Silverhand for CDPR’s Cyberpunk, but many video game fans were surprised to see him lead the Armored Core entry in Amazon Prime Video’s Secret Level.
Though Reeves is known as a professional who can perform his own stunts in action movies, he went above and beyond for his work on Secret Level because he was nursing a bad injury.
Keanu Reeves was Injured While Shooting Secret Level
In a recent talk with Collider, Secret Level creator Tim Miller and director Dave Wilson were asked about how working with Reeves on the series, and they said that the Cyberpunk star definitely ‘lived up to the hype. As it turns out, all they had to tell Reeves was that his character was a ‘junkie mech pilot,’ and he immediately agreed to star in the project.
Before things could start, though, they got news from Reeves that he had sustained an injury. Wilson explained, “So, two weeks before filming, we get this email, and it's like, ‘Dave, Tim, I got some bad news. I've fractured my kneecap,’ and, and, blah, blah, blah. I'm skimming to the bottom of the email where he's going to tell me he can't do it, and he's like, ‘But I've learned all my lines. I'm off book. I can take the brace off, and I can shoot for five minutes at a time…’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, he's still going to do it.’ And so I'm like, ‘Don't worry about it. Keep the brace on. We'll give your character a limp and a brace.’”
For context, Reeves played an augmented core pilot haunted by his past. He spends most of the episode taking down other mechs piloted by augmented people like him.
When production began, Reeves was clearly in pain, but he managed to power through and requested that they finish all his shots in one day. Wilson continues:
“… Two hours in, I can tell it's hurting, man. It's very recent, and his knee’s about the size of Tim's head. About two hours in, he's like, ‘Dave,’ And I'm like, ‘Do you want to come back tomorrow?’ He's like, ‘Let's just shoot it all now,’ And I'm like, ‘What?’ And he shot for 13 hours straight with that brace, and he doesn't leave set. He just nips out, has a cigarette, comes back in, and he's like, ‘Let's go again!’”
To top it all off, besides the bad leg, Reeves also had a cold during the shoot. “Also, he was sick,” said Wilson, “You could tell he had a cold, so a lot of the runny nose and cough and everything — all the same thing. It's not acting. He shot through it all. It was great.”
Reeves and Video Game IP
Secret Level isn’t the only video game property that Reeves has worked on recently. Besides being the poster boy Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, Reeves also provided the voice for Sonic fan-favorite Shadow in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It’s even hinted that he could also appear in a future Sonic film.
It’s unclear if Reeves would be willing to return to Secret Level for the next season, but seeing as the show managed to nab a lot of great stars, maybe there’s room in his schedule to make one more short.
Secret Level(s)?
Admittedly, Secret Level was met with a mixed reception when it was released. Many have criticized the series for being too action-centric—unlike Miller’s previous animated anthology Love, Death, and Robots, which embraced multiple genres.
The good news is that Amazon has already greenlit the show for another season, so there’s a lot of room for improvement regarding the episodes' available genres. There isn’t an announcement about what games could come in the second season, but maybe Nintendo would be willing to provide an alternative IP that isn’t so action-centric.
Secret Level Season One is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.