Actors working on a big project never actually meeting each other is far from a new phenomenon, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chris O’Donnell famously being introduced for the first time at the premiere of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, while Will Smith admitted that Jared Leto’s dedication to getting into character for Suicide Squad meant that he never technically met the man behind the Joker until long after production had finished.
Things were a little different for Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, though, which cast Tig Notaro as helicopter pilot Marianne Peters eight months after shooting wrapped once Chris D’Elia was dropped from the movie in the wake of multiple sexual misconduct allegations. The actress and comedian was forced to film all of her contributions to the zombie actioner by working alone against a green screen before being digitally added into the final cut by the post-production team.
Unsurprisingly, then, Notaro admitted in a recent interview that she’s never met Army of the Dead‘s leading man Dave Bautista, despite their characters clearly having a long-standing relationship prior to the undead apocalypse, not to mention their constant interactions throughout the third act.
“It’s funny to say because I’ve never even met Dave Bautista, not even during the press tour or not in person ever. I’ve never met the man. But yeah, I always think about the scene in the beginning when he’s asking Peters to go on this mission, and just having that history, that connection, with somebody to go do something crazy together.”
It’s an incredible feat Army of the Dead managed to pull off, and the general visual aesthetic with its fondness for out of focus backgrounds no doubt helped blurring the lines when it came to adding Notaro into the scenes featuring numerous names walking and talking all at once. Not only that, but she’s also been cited as one of the movie’s standouts, which makes it all the more impressive how her involvement even came to be in the first place, given the circumstances surrounding it.