After years of starring in several of the greatest action movies ever made, silver screen icon Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking his talents to streaming for the explosive Netflix series FUBAR, arriving on the platform on May 25. The show’s premise feels a little but like Schwarzenegger’s 1994 classic True Lies, which he made with James Cameron. In both stories, Schwarzenegger is an undercover assassin going on international missions while his family believes he works a boring, run-of-the-mill job. Except, in FUBAR, Arnold’s character learns (while on a mission) that his daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro), is a secret agent, as well.
You can almost imagine where the action goes after these deceptions are made clear. But watching FUBAR – which is available with your Netflix subscription – got me thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s own family, and how they might have reacted once they learned how amazing his job was (and is). What I didn’t realize is just how young the kids were when Schwarzenegger decided to expose them to his craft! We interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Monica Barbaro on behalf of FUBAR, and it was during the chat when Arnold told this terrific story:
I think that they slowly were exposed to it. So even when my daughter, Katherine, was like one year old, Maria brought her to the set, and I remember she’s seeing me with this half skull, and with blood running down and half human being, you know, my face. I mean, imagine a one year old baby seeing her dad like that! It was freak-out city. She started screaming and crying and freaking out. So this was the introduction to a movie set for her. My kids came to the set all the time, and they watched me blow up things, watched me killing endless amounts of people, shooting them up and stabbing them to death and all this kind of stuff – driving over their bodies, blowing up buildings. So that was it.
All in the life of a Schwarzenegger. But that’s what happens when your dad is The Terminator, the Running Man, and the star of Commando, which some of us think as the best action movie of all time. And even if he’s finished with making Terminator movies, that doesn’t change the legacy he leaves behind, and the experiences his children witnessed as he worked on these films. Of course, Schwarzenegger eventually traded Hollywood for Sacramento when he became California’s governor. And he told us even that was an issue for his children. He told CinemaBlend:
When I changed jobs and I went to Sacramento as governor, I mean, they hated it. They were crying. They were complaining. They were saying, ‘Dad, what are we doing up here in Sacramento? This is not fun. Everyone runs around with a suit on, and they’re all so serious. We had so much more fun with you in the movie studio, watching you kill people and blow things up and stuff like that. That was fun. This is not fun here. Come on, let’s get out of here!’ I said, ‘I can’t now.’ I was like, (for) the next three years, I have to stay here as governor of California.
Eventually, Arnold returned to Hollywood, which includes the Netflix series FUBAR and an action movie he has lined up for after the show. You know that Arnold Schwarzenegger will keep working until Hollywood runs out of ways to use him, and we don’t predict that will happen any time soon.
