“Immortals” Men Kellan Lutz, Luke Evans and Henry Cavill on Geting In Shape and Avoiding Craft Services

Actors Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz and Henry Cavill at Comic-Con

Getting into the superhuman shape required to play Greek gods and heroes was no easy feat for the men of Tarsem Singh’s upcoming Immortals. But listening to British actor Luke Evans, who plays Zeus, the grueling workouts were nothing compared to the temptation of the craft services table. “It was just full of bad stuff, which I thought was just evil, considering we had to keep in shape,” Evans said while promoting the film at San Diego Comic-Con. “They had plenty of candy on their craft table, we just had to stay away from it.”

Evans as Zeus

But it wasn’t a solo fight for Evans and Olympian co-stars Kellan Lutz (Poseidon) and newcomer Corey Sevier (Apollo), along with Henry Cavill and Stephen Dorff, who while playing mere mortals were still expected to get into godly shape. “We had a nutritionist who would bring us tuna and chicken and salad every hour on the hour,” said Lutz. “We needed it for the energy because Tarsem is like an Energizer Bunny. You have to stay with it because he was just all over the place having fun. Then also we’re training very hard every day.”

These gods aren’t the ones we’ve seen in either 1981’s Clash of the Titans or the 2010 remake, middle-aged or older and fully clothed. (Those films featured Sir Laurence Olivier and Liam Neeson as Zeus, respectively.) “Our gods in this movie, we’re younger,” Lutz said. “We’re not sitting in thrones just talking. We actually go to Earth to kick some butt.”

Lutz as Poseidon

Henry Cavill, last seen on Showtime’s The Tudors and set to play Superman for Zack Snyder next year, broke down the Immortals workout routine, based on the Tabata interval training style, should you want to get into godlike shape yourself. “It was 25 repetitions of an exercise, followed by eight deep breaths, followed by 25 repetitions, until you’ve completed 100 repetitions of one exercise, a minute’s rest, and then you go into round two,” he said, out of breath just describing it. “Ultimately each set of repetitions is a different part of the body being worked. It’s a very sort of high-intensity, leaning-type training.”

Cavill as Theseus

Evans, who’s also set to star in this fall’s The Three Musketeers and will be shooting The Hobbit soon, was more excited to put the restricted diet behind him than the workouts, he admitted. “I had such a short amount of time to get into the shape that they wanted, I was quite restricted. Red meat was straight out,” he said. “So I had a really nice bloody steak with chips and mustard and a pint of lager” when it was over.