Chris Hemsworth isn't afraid to try out new things. In fact, his documentary TV show "Limitless" is all about that, pushing his body and his mind past their comfort zone to show the limits of what human beings can do.
The new season features one of Hemsworth's most impressive stunts yet: learning how to play the drums for a 70,000-person Ed Sheeran concert. The episode is titled "Brain Power" and kicks off the new season.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hemsworth broke down his two months of preparation for the performance. The interviewer asked him if he'd really canceled everything to prepare for it, and Hemsworth shared that he hadn't, and struggled over it.
"I should have canceled a whole lot more," said Hemsworth. "I was in and out of a press tour at the time. I had other work obligations. I have three kids, and I couldn’t cancel them, so they were still there (laughs)."
"I would’ve liked to have sent them off somewhere else for a couple of weeks and applied my complete focus to this, but I wasn’t able to do that. So it was more just narrowing my focus and understanding what was in front of me and separating from the other things, places and different directions I was being pulled in."
Hemsworth revealed that he had his first reality check two weeks out of the performance. "I had about six to eight weeks to learn, and I kept putting it off. And about two weeks out, I realized I didn’t know the song. I was in the space of no return. It was too late, basically," he said.
Fear is a pretty good motivator
Still, the pressure and the fear paradoxically helped him perform better and learn the things that he had to learn in order to join Sheeran onstage.
"So I went home and started drumming, and I literally blistered up my fingers that week. When I did the show, I had band-aids all over my fingers. So I thought of nothing else, and while it’s not the best way of working, I operate a little better in that space sometimes. Fear can be a pretty good motivator until it’s breathing down your neck," he said.
While the experience was a frightening one, Hemsworth made it clear that it was all worth it in the end. "So I certainly was terrified, but the experience and the elation and the somewhat out-of-body feeling that I was absorbed in while playing — and then, afterward, the kick of endorphins — was unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced."