Just before Cheers and long before Frasier, acting great Kelsey Grammer honed his acting sensibilities on stage in places like the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Broadway in New York City.
And while Grammer has managed to slip in more stage roles over the decades, he’s largely worked in film and television, where he has to rely less on the power of imagination. With Grammer’s new film — the hot air balloon thriller Turbulence — however, the venerable actor got to employ his stage sensibilities once again since the movie predominantly is set in a gondola with three other performers.
In a way, the narrative is like a stage play, although one set thousands of feet in the air with a menacing atmosphere since an unhinged passenger threatens the lives of everybody else onboard.
“That’s the way it’s set up. It’s about very tight, playing space,” Kelsey said in a recent Zoom conversation. “It’s meant to feel claustrophobic because this is where people’s attitudes and their opinions and their noises are going to come out a little bit more strenuously and a little bit more emphatically. We’re all being cornered, as it were, and something’s going to give. It’s like being in a pressure cooker.”
Directed by Claudio Fäh, Turbulence opens in select theaters nationwide and is available for purchase or rent on video on demand on Friday. The film stars Jeremy Irvine as Zach, a wealthy international businessman who encounters a mysterious woman, Julia (Olga Kurlyenko), in a hotel bar after a tragic day of transisition at work.
Even though Zach pushes back on Julia’s advances, she continues to stalk him the following day and tracks him down just before he and his wife, Emmy (Hera Hilmar), are about to take a hot air balloon tour over the Dolomites mountain range in Italy. Once the balloon — which is piloted by Harry (Grammer) — is thousands of feet in the air, Julia begins to display erratic behavior and violent outbursts that could doom them all.
Despite the circumstances he and his fellow characters are in with Turbulence, Grammer said he loved how smart the script was and it was a fun project to shoot. The story, he said, even had quite a bit of reality to it.
“It’s familiar in some ways because somebody you know all of a sudden gets these crazy eyes, and you think, ‘Oh, we’re in trouble,” Grammer said.
Kelsey Grammer Says ‘Turbulence’ Mostly Employed Movie Magic
While Turbulence expertly infuses movie magic via digital effects and makes you feel like you are along for the frightening ride thousands of feet in the air, Kelsey Grammer said most of the movie was filmed in a studio, as blue screen technology helped create the awe-inspiring yet unnerving visuals as Harry, Emmy and Zach’s lives are thrown into peril.
That’s not to say that Grammer didn’t get to experience at least part of a balloon ride in Turbulence, though, even though the gondola he and his castmates were in didn’t get far off the ground.
“There was an establishing shot at the very beginning of the movie, the very first scene, basically my first appearance in the film, [that was shot] in an actual field with a basket,” Grammer recalled. “There was a balloon above us and that was fun, but we didn’t really go anywhere. We started to lift in the air just a little bit to sort of get the movie started and then the rest was shot in a studio.”
While his character experiences a treacherous ride in Turbulence, Grammer said that he’s had some pleasant rides on hot air balloons in the past and is not afraid of flying in them. In fact, hot air ballooning is much like one of Grammer’s favorite hobbies.
“I’ve gone over wine country a couple of times — that kind of thing. I enjoy them.“I think they’re pretty great and I’m not necessarily a balloonist aficionado or an enthusiast, but I like it,” Grammer said. “I like sailing a lot and it’s similar to sailing.
“That was one of the things that appealed to me with the film — the idea that my character is a captain, he’s a skipper,” Grammer added. “I loved teaching friends how to sail when I had a boat years ago. I’ll probably get another boat one day because there’s nothing I like better than sailing.”
Of course, Grammer needs to find time to sail because his showbiz career is as busy as ever, and it includes a return to his X-Men movie role as Hank McCoy/Beast in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero adventure Avengers: Doomsday in December of 2026.
Grammer, naturally, couldn’t share any plot details of the film — which features the return of MCU directors Anthony and Joe Russo and former Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom — but he could recall the feeling that swept over him when he got the call about reprising Beast for the film.
“He is absolutely at the top of my list, I love that character almost more than anything,” Grammer enthused. “To be back playing Beast was an unquestioned joy. Waking up every day, I had an absolute sense of fulfillment.”
While Grammer wore blue makeup to play Beast in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and again in a cameo appearance at the end of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, his return as the character for Avengers: Doomsday will involve a motion capture performance similar to his post-credits scene in 2023’s The Marvels.
Not surprisingly, Grammer didn’t miss the hours it took to put on Beast’s blue makeup and fur for the upcoming MCU adventure.
“It’s a lot easier. I’m wearing a digital suit now instead of putting on all the latex,” Grammer said with a laugh.
While Avengers: Doomsday is a year away, Kelsey Grammer can be starting Friday in Turbulence, which is new in select theaters nationwide and on video on demand.
