Special Report: Lou Ferrigno on Hard Redemption (2026)

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Can I help you? I'm looking for Brian Kim. If you had taken care of him when you had the chance, we wouldn't have to do this. Mr. Park, we locked in.

No internet. No phone. No phone. I'm going to check it out. You're after Brian Kim.

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No one gets to walk away. It's the end of the road for you, my friend. You know the only way out is a bullet in the head. They don't need witnesses. You know how to fight?

You fight your way. I fight my way. Don't do anything crazy. No promises. Were you planning to be a hero?

Security guard is going to be a problem. Security guard. Hey folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm so tickled by this.

On this episode, I'm talking to Lou Frigno. Wow, I was fanboying out a lot talking with Lou Frigno, really trying not to. But I think some of that comes through. Yeah, he is in a new film called Hard Redemption, which is available now. And yeah, it was a great time talking with him.

Only talked to him for about 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. Didn't have all the time in the world, but man, oh man, it was so great. Grew up watching the Hulk and seeing him all over the place. So it was wild talking with him. So I don't fanboy out very often, but I definitely was doing that this time.

I hope you have a good time listening to this interview. Thanks so much. What was it about the 1970s? Why did we know? the world of competitive weightlifting as well as we did. You, Arnold, Sven-Ole Thorsen, all of these guys coming out of this world, you could put a gun to my head today and I would not be able to tell you anybody that's competing in weightlifting.

Back then, because bodybuilding wasn't very popular, it had more to do with personality. So when the book came out, Pumping Iron, it became a bestseller. And people realized that there was a sport of bodybuilding because back then, they didn't know bodybuilding was a sport. That's why we got to the mainstream when Popping Onion came out. Everybody got involved in training, like men, women, because it became part of the culture.

That's why today it's still popular because we have different categories, like the fit for the bikini. But back in the time when I competed with Arnold, it was like a real macho man sport. It's like a camaraderie. You go to the gym, you train together. It's like the modern-day gladiator.

Even if you watch those early documentaries with Arnold and yourself, He's already talking in those things like, I want to get into politics, I want to do this, I want to do that. You've also had this just amazing career after all these years. Did you ever see yourself like, here I am, 1970s, I'm becoming the biggest man in the world, and I'm going to become an actor after this? I had a lot of dreams because back then I didn't have a speech impediment and the hearing issue. So back then, put limitations on me saying that he's the Hulk there's nothing else he can do but before that when I did Pumping Iron I was very shy and I needed a little assistance from people because I especially conducted myself but then I just decided that I had the ability to embrace my passion to maximize my personal power to be the best I could be like I worked on my speech I worked on the hearing I received a cochlear implant I never could take no for an answer when I got involved in show business back then you got in there with only three networks And back then, everybody almost had to be perfect back then to be an actor.

So for me, I had to break down from barriers. The fact that after the Hulk series, I went to do theater. It was hard for me to do it because I wanted to train my tone as an actor to be able to work more. So since then, I've done over 50 films and six TV series. But before then, all that began, I had this strong desire not to be controlled and be laughed at and be listened by the day to the next day of saying you can, you can, you can't because I had a father that had a severe relationship with him.

He was a police lieutenant. So he kept putting me down, kept saying to me that if you had your hearing, if you had your good speech, you'd be extolled even further. Yeah, because I can't take no and I feel like anything I want to achieve within my capacity, I would just go for it because I just love risk. I just love challenges. I just love He gets knocked down.

He gets up again. He's a fighter. We're here for a short time. We only live once. And I never want to be the guy in the rocking chair looking back and say, you know, I had all these different dreams, but I never really achieved it.

There's no if in my language. There's no maybe. There's no I don't know. Either do it or just don't do it. You were in a TV show back in, I think, the early 80s.

I just watched a few episodes of it in preparation of talking with you because I remember it. I think it was from 83 Trauma Center. Yes. You were amazing in that. And just your performance was one of the best things about that whole show.

Not to inflate your ego, but it was terrific. I loved that show because it was a real-life situation pertaining to paramedics. Because we have to keep the patient alive before they go to the hospital. But back then, we had a sidekick named Alfie White. They were a great team, the two of us.

And we had wonderful, wonderful actors on the show. But unfortunately, because we were against him, the TV series and we stuffed it in the ratings. That's why the show was canceled. But that's why now you have to stay elsewhere. But we could have been around for five or six years if we had the proper time slot.

What have been some of your favorite roles to play over the years? Yeah, I've done these gladiator movies and then I came back and I did King of Queens for seven years. And then I got five films coming out. I got the movie, of course, The Hermit, Heart of Redemption. I got a movie coming out called Forgotten Fortune, The Gym Rat, Flesh Before the Bang.

But the near-everything thing is the fact that, like myself, I just like every decade, I like to reinvent myself. And then I push that something new, especially with my bodybuilder fitness. The fact that I'm going to be 75, nobody looks like this. And the fact that I could give a lot of hope to the people that are getting older, like people generally, they want to improve their health. The roles that you're playing in things like I Love You, Man, those are so delightful.

It was the best comedy of 2008. I had so much fun filming that movie, especially those actors like Jason Segel. And then there's a list of the work with Paul Rudd. No, you've got a great knack for comedy. The King of Queens role, terrific.

I miss doing this show. I was sad that having James moved on because we should have given it another three or four years. Tell me a little bit about this new film. How did this one come about for you? The same as the script.

It's interesting because I've always wanted to do different action films. And especially about these two guys, the teacher and the security guard, especially when they're dealing with the gang, the gang take over the high school because they're looking for this one gang member that he broke away from the gang. But I liked it. It kind of like, it gets a little comedy in this situation where you see the two older guys, they still have it. Even though they're in their 70s, they still have it.

They don't think shit from anybody. So I liked it because the fact that I could still show my skill in fighting and And now it's a generation of martial arts. You see a lot of girls and women fighting. I enjoy it very much. Yeah, what was it like working with Gino Kang?

Because you guys share the screen a lot. He amazed me because we didn't have time to rehearse because we had a limited budget. So everything he taught me as we were fighting through the scene, it was smoothed beautifully. But Gino is a grandmaster, like 10 degree black belt. But when you first look at him, you would never think he's a grandmaster.

But then when he moves it, Whoa, surprise. But he's a very genuine person. We do connect very easily because we played off each other easily because the fact that he's made film and you see somebody from the fitness, somebody from the martial arts together. So it made an interesting relationship. Yeah.

How is it for you learning fight choreography and that? Have you ever trained professionally or is it more just the coordinator on set helping you out? I'm very flexible. I'm a good athlete. So that's why it came to me easily.

Because I did a movie years ago called Cage, back 40 years ago, where I took martial arts lessons for about two or three months. So it comes easy to me. That's why with Gino, he threw me the style to fight like a street fighter. Not karate. But if you're a good street fighter, you're not a fighter.

Karate, guys. he showed that technique to balance it. I did mention the Incredible Hulk, as did you. How is it living with this character for so many years? I brought a lot of attention to the Hulk because when I first began the Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America failed at the TV series. I wanted to take this role because I knew that nobody could play it better than I could.

So when I did this series, Back then, because with the non-speaking role, I was shown Panama, that means acting without speaking, so the emotions through the makeup, it became a bonfire hit all over the world. It changed my life because then I was competing as a bodybuilder. I wanted to go on with the Olympic competition, but I had to make that choice, one or the other, because I had that secret desire in me that I feel like I could make it as an actor somehow, some way. That's why that little Hulk, I took that little Hulk, And now you have what you call the endgame. You have the Marvel Universe.

Because back then, my show was like the pioneer, like the pilot that opened all the doors for the other comic characters. And I love this embrace of Marvel with these multiverses where you can actually bring back characters from former incarnations. I'm looking forward to seeing more of you as the Hulk. Yeah, I'm hoping to be part of the endgame because I even talked to Disney because I love to play like an aging character. Like Moskos.

What was the name of that? Yes. The fans want me to play that. Yeah, and we've seen some of the better Hulk stories adapted now, but even Planet Hulk or the older version of the Hulk, yeah, you could just nail that. Yeah.

Hopefully it'll happen someday. Were you a fan of comic books when you were growing up? Oh, huge, because as a kid, because of my diversity, I had to escape the pain as we read all these different comic books. My favorite comic books were Superman, Spider-Man. And Hulk.

It was about power. The Hulk is mostly the Hulk because you see the muscle. Everybody else had a costume, but the Hulk was like, I related the Hulk to G-Version E. I had a lot of demons inside of me, but that was the perfect character that kept me alive. Tell me about some of these other films that you have coming out.

I'm so glad that you're just still cranking them out. There's another film called Ginrod that's being released about this guy. He's obsessed. He wants to be like me. He takes a lot of drugs and steroids.

He goes down a real bad, the wrong path. And then eventually he runs into me and I change his life. It's a great film, Jim Grant. Then the other one called The God in Fortune. I filmed last August.

I played an 80-year-old man that has a girlfriend that has Alzheimer's. And people think he's seen his murder, which he did because they condoned him being an Alzheimer's patient. So you see the relationship. And then you see another movie called Flash Before the Bang. It's about these deaf kids in Oregon school.

They fight so hard to win the Oregon Track and Field Championship. But there's so much opposition against them because of their deafness and everything. So that's the other film that eventually will be coming out, which I'm very happy about. You mentioned that you got a cochlear implant. When was that?

That was four years ago with the cochlear implant because I wore two hearing aids my whole life. But the cochlear implant gives you the clarity that hearing aids can't give you. It put me to the next level, especially with that. I could hear it, I would say, 25% better compared to before. I plan to do another one in the future, but it changed my life.

That's why, like I mentioned before, I like to maximize my personal power within myself because every one of us, we can't compete with other people. You can compete with yourself, maximize your own personal power. That makes you rich. That's the best gift you can give yourself in life. We're in a good time, ladies, because 60, 70 years ago, they didn't have the technology like today.

We're very full. Do you mind if I ask you a little bit more about that, as far as how much hearing loss you had over the years? I had 80% of what you call profound hearing loss. So this puts me almost just underneath the normal range. Yeah, it works with the nerve.

It doesn't work with the cochlea. It works with the nerve, the brainwaves, because once you have it activated, after two or three weeks, the brain absorbs the sound, and then eventually it You realize the different words. It's amazing. I can't explain it. It's almost like being reborn.

You hear like you never heard before. It's almost like you want to hear like a normal person hears as close as much as possible because, like, I can hear birds chirping. I can hear the engine of a car. Before, with the hearing aid, the hearing aid just maximized the sound. But the cochlear implant absorbed the clarity.

You mentioned the one film where you're talking about the kid who's trying to be big and is taking these drugs and stuff. How much of a temptation is that in the world of bodybuilding to do enhancements? Because it's got to be, you're all about the body and you have this potential of HGH or steroids or these kinds of things. Like how tempting is that as a bodybuilder? Well, you see, if you take myself, I've worked my ass off to be a real bodybuilder champion.

I have great genetics. There's so many guys today, they want to be like me. They think the answer to the drug is in the bottle. They don't want to train as hard, work as hard. That's why there's so many people today.

They take these drugs. It's a sense of well-being. They feel like they want to be like Lou Ferrigno, like a Schwarzenegger. And that doesn't work that way because, in fact, it's all hard work and determination. And you have to love pain to be a world champion.

How often do you still work out today? I'd say four to five times a week. I do cardio for 30, 45 minutes, and I do weights for 30 minutes to flight because I'm going to be 75. But I still maintain my healthiness. fitness regime, especially that I eat healthy, I sleep good, and I train good, because I've been working out now for almost 63 years. Are you online at all, as far as like, are you on social media?

Oh yeah, Facebook. If you look at Facebook, the real Lou Ferrigno, if you check the Facebook, I have 2.6 million views, and then you see some funny things I've posted. And also the real Lou Ferrigno on Instagram. I'm so glad that you're out there still just doing it, and you're such an inspiration to people. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Ferrigno. It was great talking with you today. Thank you.

Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.