Kevin Hart blames Ice Cube for the reason he stopped doing his own stunts in movies.
The actor-comedian returned for the latest episode of Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans asked if he had “any stories about stunts going wrong or inadvertently taking a hit while shooting a sequence”
While Hart noted that he had “tons” of stories, there’s one in particular that changed his perspective on stunt work. “I got a good [story] about Ice Cube,” he recalled. “We were doing Ride Along. While doing the stunt, Ice Cube punched one of the stuntmen in the face for real by accident, and the stunt guy kind of [got] knocked out for a second. I was like, ‘Oh! That can happen? We can actually get hit?’”
The Jumanji: The Next Level actor continued, “I remember Cube just hugging the stunt guy like, ‘You are going to be all right.’ … The stunt guy was like, ‘No, I’m alright,’ [and] you [could] just see his nose bleeding a little bit.”
It was at that moment when Hart “stopped with the idea of wanting to do stunts so much.”
“The energy that I used to have … younger me was like, ‘Throw me on the fucking table! You have got to slam me? Go ahead. Just do it, do one take so we get the real reaction.’ But now I’m 45. I don’t even want to run,” he explained.
Hart went on to praise the stunt community for all the risks and talent that goes into the job. “Those guys do not get enough credit, man,” he said. “There should be a stunt award. They really do not get enough love.”
“Some of these movies that you have watched and fallen in love with where guys are falling from buildings or going through windows or falling down cliffs — they are using real people for that,” the Lil Kev actor added. “I have seen some stuntmen get fucked up and I have seen the director go, ‘We did not get it. Hey Gary, you think you got another one?’”
The 2014 movie Ride Along follows security guard Ben (Hart), who must prove himself to his girlfriend’s brother, top police officer James (Cube). He ends up going on a ride along with James on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta.
Hart was previously a guest on Hot Ones in 2016.
