The BAND OF BROTHERS cast might have hated their bootcamp leader, but star Neal McDonough said it was all by design.
“I’m a knucklehead. I love that kind of stuff,” the actor said of the bootcamp session, intended to get them in shape to play military members in the miniseries, led by retired US Marine Corps captain and Vietnam War veteran Dale Dye.
While McDonough might have enjoyed it, he said, “Those two weeks felt like three months for a lot of guys, and it was tough.”
“We all hated his guts, because he pushed us all to the brink,” he explained. “And it wasn’t until about a quarter of the way through filming that we realized he was putting on an act so we could all gel together as a unit.”
McDonough said Dye “allowed himself to be the common enemy” for the cast to create that sense of unity.
“There are a few men on this planet that I love like I love Dale Dye because he allowed himself to be that guy, and BAND OF BROTHERS would not be BAND OF BROTHERS were it not for him,” he added.
Related: Actor Neal McDonough Relied on Faith After Hollywood Blacklisted Him For Christian Ethics
Dye wasn’t the only person who helped whip the BAND OF BROTHERS cast into shape before production began. McDonough recalled “a mutiny” that took place after a few days of bootcamp, which led to Tom Hanks helicoptering in.
“He got us all attention, and he says, ‘Look, we all owe it to everyone in Easy Company, and everyone in World War II, to work our hardest because they gave their lives for our freedoms. The least we can do is work our tails off to tell the truth as hard as we can so we give honor to those men and women,'” McDonough remembered.
He continued, “We all realized Tom was right. They lived, breathed, and died for what we have this day, freedom. None of us forgot about that, and as soon as the show came out, we realized Tom was right the whole time.”
“He knew it was going to be a massive hit. Stephen [Spielberg] knew it would be a big hit. We were just lughead actors who were doing our jobs,” McDonough said. “And then when it came out, and it was the hit that it became, and it is still 25 years later, it just boggles my mind how fortunate every single one of us were to be cast in the show.”
Other cast members are still impacted by their time working on BAND OF BROTHERS. Actor Damian Lewis recently told PEOPLE, “BAND OF BROTHERS means everything to me. It was an incredible show to be part of. Its legacy has gone on and on and on. People adore it. It stands up. I’ve seen it recently. It stands up as a piece of drama.”
Making BAND OF BROTHERS might have been challenging for its cast, but decades later, their tribute to Easy Company is still a powerful depiction of what it was like to serve in WWII.
Read Next: What You Need to Know About Tom Hanks’ New WWII Documentary
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
