Sylvester Stallone: ‘Fans ripped my film apart 42 years ago – but I loved it’

I can’t lie, meeting Sylvester Stallone on my 37th birthday was a very odd moment in my life.

Now, it wasn’t a bad experience, but when Metro stepped into the swanky hotel suite to chat to the 80-year-old Oscar nominee for Tulsa King season 4, it felt different from other interviews. 

I wasn’t meeting just another actor. I was shaking hands with Rocky Balboa; I was shooting the s**t with Rambo; I was talking to THE Sylvester Stallone, an icon of the silver screen. 

Basically, I was a bit nervous but, more than that, I wasn’t just bringing a notepad into the interview; I was bringing some massive preconceptions about the man I was going to meet. 

I expected a sweat-stained 80s action star, but the Sly I met wasn’t a machine gun-wielding Vietnam vet or a beaten and bruised boxer; he was relaxed, laid-back, and totally at ease with himself. 

And for Sly, that was part of the allure of playing the mobster Dwight Manfredi in Tulsa King; it was liberating to play a character that was more like him and didn’t require the same physicality as the roles that made him a household name. 

‘[Maintaining my physicality] was an albatross around my throat,’ he sighed. ‘You had to constantly be aware of your body and how it’s working, how it’s functioning, injuries.

‘Did you put on an extra pound and a half? So it wasn’t as though you cared about the character. You cared about the superficial image.’

‘I’ll give you an example: First Blood is the best of the [Rambo] series,’ he continued. 

‘Because it isn’t predicated on the physical. You’re feeling the emotion. [Rambo] two, three, four, they all accentuated the supernatural quality, which I felt was a mistake on my part.’

Sly then, it could be said, is correcting that mistake by playing Dwight in Tulsa King; explaining the show allows him to show the ‘pitfalls of ageing’.

Instead, he jokes he just shows up to set as himself, but acts as if he were a gangster in a nice suit.  

Indeed, Sly told me that when he and show creator Taylor Sheridan first met, Dwight wasn’t the affable mobster we’ve seen take over Tulsa. Taylor envisioned the character as a far more imposing figure. 

‘There was a certain concept, which is Taylor’s, where my character was really tough,’ Sly explained. ‘So he went in and just started taking things over with physicality. I thought, well, my image is not that I said, “let me add a little softness to it”.’

Sly wanted to make Dwight a more palatable character, sanding off his rougher edges and giving him a sense of humour. 

‘Taylor was on board with that,’ he continued. ‘It was a different concept, but it worked. So everything’s been compos mentis, it’s great.’

‘There’s a certain freedom in doing it,’ he laughed, saying he’s never really had the opportunity to do anything like this before despite working as an actor for nearly 60 years. 

‘It was such a long shot, and I don’t think people expected it, nor did I,’ he explained when I asked if he thought he’d become so attached to a character so late in his career. 

‘But we are going into our fifth season,’ he continued. ‘You know how fast that went? When it goes fast like that, that means you’re enjoying it.’

And the fun he’s having is making him more willing to take risks because, as he puts it, it’s making him bring out his A-Game. 

‘When you’re sitting there going one-on-one with Sam Jackson, for example, it’s like a big tennis tournament, because all of us want to show the other guy up. It’s competitive,’ he smiled. 

‘In other words, you feel like you’re in the big leagues now. You’re not just working with regular guys, good actors; you’re working with guys that’ll chew you to pieces if you’re not on your A game.’

Of course Sly might love playing Dwight, but he’s not forgotten the roles that made him famous, and it’s clear he’s proud of his work on Rocky, Rambo and Demolition Man (Which he tells me he thinks would make a great streaming series).

Still, there’s one movie he made that he thinks deserves a critical reassessment; specifically, the musical rom-com Rhinestone, which starred the late great Dolly Parton. 

‘You know, I got excoriated for Rhinestone,’ he said. ‘[But] I wanted to be the biggest fool there is because I was supposed to be [playing] that kind of guy.

‘So when people look at me going: “Whoaaaaa!” I wanted them to ask: “That’s Rambo? That was Rocky? Are you kidding? What is he having a nervous breakdown?”

‘I [told Dolly], I’m going for it. So we had the best time, and the audience hated it, but we loved it, and you can’t even find the film today. You can find Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot, but you can’t find that even with this icon like Dolly.’

‘But it was the best. And you’ll never meet a woman like Dolly. I mean, she went from poverty to real icon status. [Dolly was] so generous and smart and loving and funny. I mean, she was unbelievable.’

Tulsa King will return to Paramount Plus for the hit series’ fourth season on Friday, October 16.

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