None of us saw it coming—Keanu Reeves starring in an animated short for Armored Core caught everyone off guard, and it seems like the executive producer at Secret Level was just as astonished as the rest of us.
When Reeves made that unexpected appearance in the initial Secret Level trailer, it turned heads in the most surprising way. Reeves is a powerhouse in the acting world, and while his involvement in Cyberpunk 2077 made news, seeing him in an Armored Core animated short wasn’t something anybody anticipated. Interestingly, when Dave Wilson, the executive producer of the show, was queried about Reeves taking a role, he initially thought it was all a prank. Wilson, alongside creator and Deadpool director Tim Miller, recently chatted with GamesRadar, sharing insights about bringing Reeves on board.
"We’d never collaborated with him before, though I had a brief encounter once," Miller explained. "Keanu is a big fan of animation. He came by Blur Studios to chat about a completely different movie and mentioned, ‘You know, I really want to discuss Love, Death and Robots. Can you give me all the details? I’m crazy about animation.’"
Miller continued, "So I said to him, ‘We’re working on this other project. Would you like to be part of it?’ And he was all in, saying, ‘F**k yeah.’ I asked if there was a particular character he wanted, and he replied, ‘No, just get me in, coach!’ That’s when I asked Dave, ‘If we were casting Keanu Reeves in this show, which role would he fit?’ At first, Dave thought I was pulling his leg about Keanu wanting to join."
Wilson remembered the situation a bit differently. Initially puzzled by Miller’s voicemail—which his phone transcribed as "’Hey, do we have anything for piano?’"—he confided, "I was like, ‘What?’ Then it hit me, and initially, I couldn’t quite believe it." He also shared that "Keanu joined pretty late in the series, and by that time, all the art was already displayed up on the walls. There weren’t many roles left uncast, so I started receiving audition tapes from other actors, thinking, ‘Tim, there’s nothing left.’"
But, evidently, there was a significant role still available, which Reeves took on. We don’t have to wait much longer to see how he executes this role; the show’s first episodes drop on Prime Video next week on December 10.
