Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Star Snuck in NSFW Joke

One joke in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is more than meets the eye. In 1994 Brooklyn, former U.S. Army private Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) finds himself behind the wheel of the wise-cracking Mirage (voiced by Pete Davidson): an alien Autobot disguised on Earth as a silver with blue striped 964-generation Porsche 911. In hiding with Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), Bumblebee, and Arcee (Liza Koshy), the free-wheeling Mirage quickly becomes robo-boys with Noah, who gets roped into helping the Autobots retrieve the Transwarp key: an artifact capable of summoning the planet-devouring Unicron (Colman Domingo).

“It’s my favorite line in the movie,” director Steven Caple Jr. told IMDb: On The Scene. “It was one joke where Noah goes, ‘Hey we’re just work friends’… and [Mirage] responds, ‘Work friends? You were inside me!’”

The line, improvised by Saturday Night Live alum Davidson, caught Ramos off guard. “Thatline, I had no idea. I laughed out loud when I was doing ADR [automated dialogue replacement] for thatscene.” Ramos added that Davidson was “cast after we shot the film… so it was really fun goingto ADR and actually hearing what Pete did with the character.”

Caple previously told Yahoo that Davidson “killed” his audition as the least-serious Autobot, who has grown tired of being cooped up as a car after their Transformer faction is stranded millions of miles away from their home world Cybertron.

“He was doing a little bit of ad-libbing and free-styling and we broughtthat into the movie as well,” the director said. “When we were in thebooth, he kept trying to top his jokes in the moment. Pete Davidsonreally did his thing as Mirage.” Added Ramos: “I’d be dubbing my voice and watching our scenes thinking ‘Pete is absolutely killing this right now.’ He’s so funny, and he’s so New York. You could feel that StatenIsland vibe from him. He’s super-talented and perfect [for that role].”

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now playing only in theaters.