As Sylvester Stallone continues to make the interview rounds to promote his new series, Tulsa King, the iconic action star has been getting candid about the days when he and Arnold Schwarzenegger would go toe-to-toe at the box office. While the two are close pals now, Stallone recently admitted that the musclebound stars genuinely hated each other during the height of their careers.
“We couldn’t stand to be in the same galaxy together for a while. We truly, truly loathed each other,” Stallone recently revealed to Insider while expanding on the anecdote about how Schwarzenegger tricked him into starring in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
The Rocky star took things even further while talking to Forbes about the fierce competitiveness between the two that ultimately led to a friendship built on being Hollywood titans:
“We really disliked each other immensely because we were… this may sound a little vain, but I think we were pioneering a kind of genre at that time and it hasn’t been seen since really,” Stallone told me via Zoom Thursday while promoting his new series Tulsa King, which premieres on Paramount+ Sunday. “So the competition, because it’s his nature, he is very competitive and so am I… and I just thought it actually helped, but off-screen we were still competitive and that was not a healthy thing at all, but we’ve become really good friends.”
After spending two decades hating each other, you’re now more likely to see Stallone and Schwarzenegger showing up to each other’s red carpet premieres and exchanging hugs that would crush mere mortals. It’s like a thunderclap from the Gods when they slap each other’s backs. Good for them.