Who knew tag could get so dangerous?
Last year, Variety reported that Jeremy Renner injured his arms. Now, in an interview with EW, Renner gives more details about how he broke both of his arms while filming the action comedy Tag, which follows a group of five friends who embark on an elaborate annual game of tag that's been happening for three decades. But on the second day of filming, Renner was seriously injured on a stunt gone wrong.
Renner says he went on with his day as normal but started to feel a bit off. "Then I realized, I think something’s wrong, so I went to the hospital, and they said it was broken, so I got them wrapped up and then I went back to work and did everything I could do to continue on as we did," he said.
The show had to go on—especially since this was the only time Renner could film in between his Avengers schedule. But the fact that Renner's character in Tag is the only one who has yet to be tagged in the game made the filming a bit trickier.
"I couldn’t rotate my hands but I could move my arms up and down kind of like a robot, but I would do anything that didn’t hurt essentially,” he said. But between CGI and a large amount of therapy, the film was able to still happen. (Yes, he actually has CGI arms in the film.)
"The first week was a little rough just because of the swelling, but the swelling went down after the first week. I would take the splints off as often as I could so I didn’t stay in this sort of like arm bent position, stiffened, so I was working through therapy and all sorts of stuff throughout the whole picture but I just limited what I could do with my hand," he said.
Renner had to push through for the Avengers shoot as well because who's Hawkeye without being able to shoot bows and arrows?
"What else do you do, you just stop and cry and everyone go home? You know what I mean? I’d be like, 'sorry guys, I’m not going to use a bow and arrow now in Avengers,' it’s silly, so I have to kind of push through so that you can perform for everyone," he said. Although Hawkeye didn't show up in Avengers: Infinity War, this hopefully means we'll see him in action in Avengers 4. Happy healing to Renner!
Tag, which also stars Jon Hamm, Hannibal Buress, Ed Helms, and Jake Johnson, arrives in theaters on June 15.
