Sylvester Stallone Opens Up On Competing With Arnold Schwarzenegger In Their Heyday

They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Come on, shake your fist at the clouds, it’s true. You won’t find superhero hate here, but with enhanced CGI, streaming, and less than a handful of actual bankable movie stars whose projects premiere on a big screen, it’s not the same.

Gone are the days when the two biggest action stars in the world stood on towering piles of money trading box offices blows year after year. We’ll never experience the explosive cinema we received in the ‘80s and ‘90s with action-packed blockbuster franchises like the Terminator and Rambo films in full swing, not to mention Rocky’s early sequels.

So did the competition between Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger bring out the best from the legendary actors? What were things like between them off-screen?

“We really disliked each other immensely because we were… this may sound a little vain, but I think we were pioneering a kind of genre at that time and it hasn’t been seen since really,” Stallone told me via Zoom Thursday while promoting his new series Tulsa King, which premieres on Paramount+ Sunday. “So the competition, because it’s his nature, he is very competitive and so am I… and I just thought it actually helped, but off-screen we were still competitive and that was not a healthy thing at all, but we’ve become really good friends.”

Stallone has dipped his toe in what’s driving the box office these days, superhero films. Sylvester played “Stakar Ogord” in the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies and is set to reprise the role in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 in 2023. Guardians writer and director James Gunn got an unlikely new gig when he was named the co-CEO of DC Studios with Peter Safran two weeks ago.

“I think of him as a great filmmaker,” the 76-year-old actor said of Gunn. “I talk about it all the time, I say, ‘I don’t know, I consider myself pretty good as a director but I couldn’t do what he does,’ because it’s so technical and it’s so time-consuming and I think he’s going to be an amazing asset (to DC).”

With his new project Tulsa King, Sylvester is able to put a lot of himself into the role despite the his character Dwight “The General” Manfredi — a New York mafia capo released from prison after 25 years and exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma — being a bit edgy and unhinged at times.

“Actually, it’s almost like a natural state of mine. Have to tell you the truth, I’m serious,” Stallone said. “I’m trying to play this character really off-kilter but sort of how I am.

“I tend to joke around, I tend to be a little irreverent in my own life. People always think I’m like Rocky or Rambo, really somber but what you see in Dwight is as close as you’re ever going to see to my personality.

“So I thought I’d gamble with that, because I didn’t know if it was going to work. We had two different camps, some said maybe he should be more foreboding. I said, ‘I’m not going to be foreboding at all, I want to be a little like you cannot exactly figure out what’s going to happen next with this guy.”

Overall, the deep dive into an episodic series was a new experience for Stallone that left a lasting impression on him.

“It’s very different,” Sylvester said. “First of all, I have a great deal of empathy for people who do that, but I don’t think there’s a choice anymore.

“The kinds of films I like to do, they’re not making them anymore, so this seems to be the only venue. It’s actually a very lucrative one for the studio and I’m happy because it allows me to do something that would be impossible as a feature, it just would.”

Tulsa King was created by Academy Award nominee Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone) who also serves as executive producer alongside Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award® winner Terence Winter (Sopranos).