Why Alan Ritchson HATED Filming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

People don't know I can say it now because I'm done with that set of movies and they've been out whatever that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was like the worst production experience I've ever had it made me hate life so much wow yeah I wanted to get into that because yeah because I hated life on that show they were so bad to us and they broke so many promises like it was it was it was rough what did they promise you and what didn't come through like the biggest reason you do it like I said no I didn't want to do it because I was like I'm nobody's going to even I'm going to waste years of my life of my the best years of my career on something that nobody's going to know I'm even a part of right I don't want to lend myself to that and they're like no no this is the whole new live action one-to-one you move they move you're just as much a part of this as anybody else so when it comes time to like get you out there you're going to be in every country in the world premieres all over the place like we're really going to get you out there like I mean they they were like you are as much a part of this as anybody without the mask you know what I mean and it was like all right well obviously like that always helps like getting getting to know other audiences and other countries internationally and I you know I had young boys at the time you know so or a boy at the time and you know and I was like I really want to do this for them like how fun would that be so I was like okay I'll do it knowing it's like it's not it doesn't pay anything and it's going to be hard work in a long time and a lot of commitment um it didn't pay much yeah I'm surprised oh no oh no what no it was like like take it or leave it most guys in town said no just because it didn't pay anything really like yeah I guess I'll do it you know I'll do it but I'm doing it more for like to get to because I don't really have that kind of audience you know and I again like I just had a kid and I was like this is really fun okay I'll do it you know um and they were promising like you know it's not gonna it's not gonna be like you're just a guy in a mask you know so um they were like look at their point of the lord of the rings and like look what happened to him like he's uh you mean yeah like look at Andy Serkis like like it changed like look at that's what it's doing now for people you know they pitch you the role on being the next Andy Serkis basically yeah yeah and uh and I still have emails that I sent to the president of Paramount because they they not only would they refuse to allow us to do any press to talk to people we found out after the fact that they were telling people that we were refusing interviews and it wasn't true and they didn't invite us to the premiere we had like it was just did they not want you to do press because they were worried you were going to say something bad about the production no no there was nothing bad I mean it was a grueling production and they didn't it was like rough it's hard work you guys are you were in suits a version of the suit like after that we'd rap like people don't know this like we you think like I mean still this is what I'm talking about though people coming up to you thinking that they know you they don't know you like we okay so we would rap one day right it was a long day and they don't they have this we we realized the problem with this like animated contract it's a different kind of deal that we made it's like never been done before it's new ground and so they had all these loopholes we realized after the fact where they didn't have to pay us for anything extra meal penalties lunch overtime nothing so we're this group of four an island of just ripe for abuse right and the crew was rapping out we were shooting in Brooklyn one day and had a long ride back to Manhattan where all of us were everybody was staying and they wouldn't let us in the cars to go home the the turtles they wouldn't let us in the cars to go what do you mean they wanted to get the crew out of there to get them off the clock because if they stayed they had to pay them right if we stay they don't and the freaking uh studio that we're shooting in locks the doors because they were like we're closing up for the night uh we gotta we have cleaning crew coming in like it's not no security here and so we're in the parking lot sitting on our backpacks in an empty parking lot because the rest of the crew driven anybody who needed to be shuttled was being shuttled they're like uh producer said you can't get in yet so they like we sat there i'm calling my team in LA like they won't give us a ride home what the kind of production is this like get us home we shot for 14 hours today i want to go home three rides come around because they go back and forth and back yeah bunches of vans and finally they're like so we got everything we guys blowed up and i'm like what is this and you know you tell the producers about it like um yeah okay well we're you know sorry about that that's not how it was supposed to go down you know who was making the call on that though if it's not the producers because you who do you think the people who write the checks yeah so which is the producers yeah so uh you know and i was always very honest about how i felt you know and and so then coming into the second one they're like look man we talked about what you gave to us for the first one and i know there's no press and that's you know it's like a lot of stuff went wrong uh but we're gonna make it up to you we're gonna give you some back end on this one and make it up which we didn't get on the first i was like all right and but i didn't say i wasn't like oh okay great i remember sitting there going like this is all this is all not going to materialize just like it did this year and it didn't so you didn't end up getting back in none of it did you were you contractually obligated to come back for the second one i was contractually obligated to come back for three and i tried so hard to get off coming back from the second one for three you were when did you find out they had killed three or have they killed three they've killed three after the numbers came out like the weekend after two came out yeah did you get a phone call on that or you just figure um i think i don't remember i think we got a call yeah everyone had a similar experience on set to you pretty much pretty much i mean you know not you know like megan and will were treated so differently because they had like real real writers you know they had like their contracts were like the star wagons and the um you know the exclusive rides and like they wouldn't they wanted they were like well we're going to treat you the same way but you guys you know just because you're always in the scenes together we're just going to sort of like a couple you guys you know so but that wasn't it wasn't at all what happened it was just it was rough so why did i why did we start talking about that because we were talking about people you know what's going to happen people are going to be like oh yeah he's like oh this guy with everything in a movie whining about his job i'm like i go you know i i'm like uh going into clean the toilets again and he's like well i'm i don't hear that from you at all there's no winning i shouldn't talk about this my wife is going to stab me when i get no you're honest i i we i think we appreciate it and our audience appreciates that as well everything i think you have a dream and not everything ends up looking like what you thought your dream is going to be what i want it to look like and this is the way i treat it when i produce things now i treat people with the kind of respect that i want to be treated with that i didn't get on some of these projects so yeah you know they're they're met with like some uh they're met with just like a human component to the whole thing and and uh do what you say you're gonna do you know so simple as that