Mark Wahlberg is on the mend after tearing his meniscus on the set of his new film, Arthur the King. But shockingly, the actor has decided not to undergo surgery to correct the injury.
“I prefer to try to do corrective exercises versus surgery. It’s not my thing,” he told People in an interview published on Friday, March 15.
Mark, 52, revealed exactly how the injury happened as he was filming a scene for the adventure film.
“[I was] running along a hill where we went up the embankment and just jumped off a little rock, landed on it wrong,” the Academy Award nominee explained. “I kind of snapped my knee back and it tore, but when I got it x-rayed, the doctor was pretty adamant about doing the surgery because what happens is, if it locks, it can lock in a bent and flexed position and then you cannot move your knee until they perform the surgery.”
The injury was painful, but Mark ultimately decided to continue working on the film, including doing some of his own stunts.
“I just said, ‘You know what? I got to kind of try to tough it out and see if I can get through the movie,’” he said.
Mark first opened up about tearing his meniscus during a screening of the film on February 19. Arthur the King is based on the 2016 book Arthur – The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home.
“Unfortunately, I tore my meniscus the first day, so all my training went out the window,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “Then it’s basically just about getting through it.”
“So I got to understand the suffering a little bit more than I wanted to,” he continued.
His determination to finish filming came after pushing hard to get the movie made in the first place.
“I just felt like, you know, it took a long time to get the movie off the ground and we were in the middle of COVID, and if I had shut it down, I don’t know if we would’ve got it up and running again,” he reflected. “So I just kind of toughed it out and I found different ways of getting through.”
Mark worked with a canine costar named Ukai on the film, whom he admitted to “falling in love” with on the set.
“Oh my God, I tried to bribe the trainer to sell me the dog,” he told People. “I offered her whatever she would want. But, of course, that bond is not something that you can separate. I just fell in love with him.”
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