‘I was in pain all the time’: Laurence Fishburne reflects on The Matrix
Laurence Fishburne was in “pain all the time” during the making of The Matrix due to the intense training schedule the cast was put through.
Laurence Fishburne was in “pain all the time” when making The Matrix.
The 64-year-old actor starred in the sci-fi/action franchise as Morpheus alongside Keanu Reeves’ Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity, and Fishburne has now admitted the intense training regime the cast went through to prepare for the original 1999 movie left him exhausted.
During an appearance at the Marrakech Film Festival, he said: “We were essentially the first Western actors to work in the Hong Kong style.
“And so [martial arts choreographer] Yuen Woo-ping was very concerned that we weren’t going to be able to [pull it off]. So he trained us really hard—training us like professional athletes.
“And it was in the middle of that training I realized why they pay professional athletes so much money: Because professional athletes are always in pain. Not in pain sometimes—like when you go to the gym and then you’re sore for a day. They’re in pain All. The. Time.”
In The Matrix, hacker Neo (Reeves) discovers that his reality is a simulated world controlled by machines and joins a rebel group led by the enigmatic Morpheus (Fishburne).
As he trains to unlock his true potential, Neo becomes humanity’s best hope against the powerful agents enforcing The Matrix.
The movie also starred Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, Gloria Foster as The Oracle and Marcus Chong as Tank.
Years after the 2003 sequels The Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions, director Lana Wachowski - who had helmed the original trilogy with her sister Lilly Wachowski - began working on a new instalment, The Matrix: Resurrections.
While Reeves and Moss returned for the 2021 film, Fishburne was not brought back to play Morpheus, with Yahya Abdul Mateen II instead picking up the role.
Fishburne recently revealed he had contacted Wachowski about featuring in The Matrix: Resurrections, but didn’t hear anything back.
Speaking at The Matrix reunion event at New York Comic Con, he said: “I reached out. It just didn't pan out.
“I said, ‘Thank you very much’, and Lana said, ‘Thank you very much, I'll think about it’, and that was that.”
The John Wick star added he doesn’t know if it “makes sense” for him to play Morpheus again in another Matrix film.
When asked if he would return to the franchise for a new movie, he said: “It depends on how good it is, really. If it's great, then yeah, it makes sense. I don't know if it makes sense.”
Reflecting on the legacy of The Matrix, Fishburne said he believed the film had laid the foundations for the modern-day sci-fi and fantasy genres.
He explained: “There's no movie that comes after The Matrix that's a sci-fi action or fantasy movie that's not been influenced by it.
“It's everywhere. It's so pervasive you almost forget where it came from at this point. Now, people don't realise, but no The Matrix, no Marvel Cinematic Universe. It [just] doesn't look the same.”
