‘Sh**ing myself’: Transformers star Anthony Ramos reveals and he handled the pressure
Musical theatre-turned-sci-fi action star Anthony Ramos reveals how he handled the pressure of being in a big blockbuster.
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It seems astonishing that a movie based on a kids’ toy could become a pop culture phenomenon, but 16 years, seven movies and $7 billion at the box office later, there’s clearly more to the Transformers franchise than meets the eye.
Since Michael Bay’s original sci-fi action inspired by the shapeshifting Hasbro playthings stormed into cinemas in 2007, right up to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts which has already rustled up an impressive $250 million since its debut last week, audiences continue to vote with their feet, despite reviews that tend to be lukewarm at best.
Anthony Ramos, who follows in the footsteps of Shia LaBeouf and Mark Wahlberg by playing the human lead opposite a plethora of CGI fighting robots in Rise of the Beasts, thinks the reason why is simple.
“People ask me why Transformers has stood the test of time,” he says with a laugh, “I mean, what other franchise is there about giant, flying alien robots? What other franchise is doing it like this? There’s none – and that’s what makes it so special.”
Ramos, better known for his musical theatre work as part of the original Broadway cast of Hamilton and the stage and film versions of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, goes deep with the Robots in Disguise and was one of the countless teenage boys who lost his mind when Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and their Transformer pals hit the big screen alongside LaBeouf and Megan Fox.
“I was bugging, bro, when the first movie came out,” Ramos says, excitedly. “Hell, yeah. I’d never seen visual effects like that in a movie – just insane. The upgrade of visual effects was just crazy – that s--- was blowing your mind in the theatre.”
As a kid growing up in the New York borough of Brooklyn in the 1990s, Ramos had been tuning in for new episodes of the animated Transformers series every weekend, and was particularly obsessed with the Beast Wars series that inspired the most recent film.
In addition to the usual Transformer suspects, who transform from vehicles into robots, the ‘90s-set Rise of the Beasts introduces the Maximals, who turn from robots into animals such as gorillas, rhinos, eagles and cheetahs (because why not?) and are voiced by the likes of Ron Perlman, and newly-minted Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh.
Ramos, who plays an ex-military electronics expert who teams up with the Transformers and the Maximals to save the world from a planet-eating mega-robot, says his younger self would simply not be able to comprehend his current situation.
“You make jokes about that when you watch Transformers, like how cool would it be to be able to do that?,” he says. “So doing a movie with Cheetor for me was like doing a movie with The Rock.”
Although he’d made the effects-heavy sci-fi comedy Distant – shot in 2020 but still to be released – Ramos says that huge action set pieces of Rise of the Beasts, not to mention headlining a big-budget blockbuster, brought a weight of expectation that was as scary as it was thrilling.
“It was definitely a step up,” he agrees. “It wasn’t like singing and dancing in the street in In the Heights – but it was exciting. You try to forget that the movie was $300 million and that prevents you from s---ing yourself more than once a day.”
As much as the Transformers films thrive on the CGI biffo of rival robots duking it out for world domination, Rise of the Beasts follows in the footsteps of some of its predecessors by showcasing some of the world’s most spectacular locations.
Ramos says he felt blessed (literally, an indigenous shaman came to the hotel where the cast and crew were staying to perform a welcoming ritual) that he was able to shoot for a week in Machu Picchu. Rise of the Beasts was the first blockbuster movie given permission to shoot in the 15th-century Inca citadel in southern Peru, and also filmed in the surrounding jungle and at altitude of 3400m in the historical capital of Cusco.
“It was really special – being able to shoot there for six days with Machu Picchu as our backyard,” he says. “And they said if you weren’t shooting then feel free to climb. I went up there more than once because it’s the chance of a lifetime.”
Ramos knows that he probably would never have landed his dream role in Transformers – as well as parts in the coming Marvel TV show Ironheart and the long-awaited sequel to Twister – without Hamilton. He still looks back fondly at his time playing the dual roles of John Laurens and Philip Hamilton in the Tony-winning musical and marvels that the choices he and his cast mates made when workshopping the material nearly a decade ago are still resonating in productions as far afield as Australia.
“Hamilton changed my life massively,” he says.
“It was everybody coming to the show every night … it got to the point where we would finish the show and you’d expect someone wild to be there, like Oprah or Jay-Z or the President or the Prime Minister of this country or that country. It was like ‘who the f--- is here tonight?’. It was special like that and a show that a lot of people connected to. Like, all the way in Australia and this thing just hits.”
“To be a part of that show from its conception, from when we were around music stands and making s--- up – there was no choreography or nothing, bro – we were just reading the words off the paper and coming up with s--- together. It changed my life in a big way. It got me to Transformers, so let’s see where Transformers can get me.”
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is in cinemas on June 22.
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