Keanu Reeves sent hearts racing in the theater and on social media when he stripped down to his underwear and allowed his lean, muscled torso to be covered in fake blood at the end of his Halloween night performance of “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway.
The 61-year-old “Matrix” actor was joined in this exhibition by Alex Winter, his co-star in “Waiting for Godot” and his past co-star in their Bill and Ted teen time-travel movies, the Daily Mail reported.
There is nothing in Samuel Beckett’s existential tragicomedy that would require its two leads to strip down at the end of the drama. The Daily Mail explained that they didn’t do it as part of the play but during their curtain call at the Hudson Theatre. After completing their normal bows, the actors returned to the stage, each in black boxer briefs and covered in red liquid.
So, what was the purpose of this bloody encore, artistic or otherwise?
While the display of blood could be Halloween-related, the Daily Mail said the actors actually wanted to pay tribute, in an inside-theater way, to Jamie Lloyd, the show’s hotshot British director. Lloyd worked with Reeves in mounting a Broadway revival of this classic play and, apparently, he has a thing about his leading men appearing at the end of his shows, stripped down and covered in some kind of liquid, according to the Daily Mail.
Footage from the curtain call for Lloyd’s recent adaptation of “Evita” on the West End in London showed actor Diego Andres Rodriguez, who portrays Che, coming out on stage in boxer briefs and dripping in paint, according to MSN. Lloyd’s Broadway revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” which won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, likewise ended with actor Tom Francis coming out on stage for the curtain call, dressed in a “similarly stripped-down manner.”
No one can say why this has become a thing for Lloyd’s productions but MSN noted that images from these curtain calls have become social media memes.
Now, Reeves and Winter, in their bloody encore underwear, can expect to find themselves memes. An X post from the Keanu Reeves Archive fan account shared images from the curtain call, to which people resonded: “DAM! YOU LOOK MARVELOUS,” “Wowwwwww, thanks for the image!!” and “Keanu is handsome even in ketchup.”