Twisted Metal is making its Peacock debut later this week, bringing the PlayStation franchise’s classic car combat to a television near you. One of the stars of the show is Thomas Haden Church who plays Agent Stone. Over the years, we’ve seen several different versions of Stone in the video game series, but Church’s version looks to portray him as a blond-headed, hard-nosed police officer. Speaking with ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian, Church described where the inspiration for Stone’s look came from. Though some (including Killian) thought it might have been from legendary bleach-blonde wrestler Ric Flair, Church said it actually came from someone else. Video of Thomas Haden Church’s comments can be found at the top of this page.
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“Maybe Roy Batty in Blade Runner,” Church said, “Just because my writing partner and I are huge fans of Blade Runner…and then I had an idea of what it was going to look like, and then I wanted to have the shades blue. I just decided…I wanna do a snow white flattop, and I pitched it to Michael [Jonathan Smith], and he was like, ‘done. That’s it, that’s the guy.’”
If you look at Roy Batty in the original Blade Runner, it’s an inspiration that makes a lot of sense. While thinking Church got some inspiration from Flair because he was working with Samoa Joe makes sense, Batty could easily be Agent Stone’s son or younger brother if they existed in the same universe. Plus, as Church points out later in the above video, he’s had minimal interaction with wrestling over the years, so he’s not getting much inspiration from that world.
Regardless of where he got the look from, Church’s Agent Stone looks like the kind of character that’s going to strike fear into viewers’ hearts. Sure, Sweet Tooth, the demented clown, is going to get all of the villain headlines, but Stone might actually end up being the more terrifying of the two. Between his gruff demeanor and the rocket launcher mounted above his cop car, Stone might end up as one of the breakout stars of Twisted Metal on Peacock.
Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to the SAG actors’ strike.
