-You know our first guest tonight
from films like "300" and "Olympus Has Fallen."
He stars in "Hunter Killer," which is in theaters Friday.
Let's take a look.
-75! 50 feet!
40 feet! -Cast it!
-30 feet! 2-5!
-Terminal holding, Captain. -Right full rudder.
-Right full rudder, aye, Captain.
-Please welcome back to the show
our friend Gerard Butler, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back.
I'm so happy to have you here.
I think you're living the dream.
I feel like, if you're an actor who at some point in your career
gets to scream "right full rudder," that's the dream.
-I actually had a -- I was in a Bond movie
right at the beginning of my career,
and I got to say things like --
I was a sailor on a ship saying,
"Torpedoes bearing range, 6,000."
And while I'm filming,
the quartermaster said he wouldn't say that.
So it all got taken away from me.
-Oh, he took away your lines. -He took away my lines.
And I was left with, "We're down by the stern, sir."
So from that day, I said, "I am making a submarine movie.
I'm going to produce it
and nobody is going to take my lines away."
-There you go.
You play a captain in this movie.
And there's a coup in Russia.
And you're sort of preventing a world war.
Normal stuff for Gerard Butler.
-Normal stuff. Yeah.
-A regular day at the office.
But this is interesting.
The Pentagon, the Navy asked you
to actually give a press conference
to talk about the film.
And this is a real thing.
You went and gave a press conference at the Pentagon.
And I should point out -- [ Cheers and applause ]
Yeah.
Like, you're -- so this --
I want to make sure everybody knows.
You're an actor talking about a movie.
But these are real reporters. Right?
-Yes. Yes. -How was it?
-Unfortunately they put in the real reporters, not fake ones.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, so the Navy were incredible in supporting us
with this movie, and then I was invited to the Pentagon.
I thought, "Great, I'm going to go along,
get a trip around the Pentagon
and they're going to show me around."
And they said, "And if you can just do a press conference
at the end."
And they gave me information about the Navy.
So I'm thinking -- I'm more defending them, saying,
"Don't worry, you didn't spend any money,
necessarily deviate from their missions."
And as we get there, I look out,
and I go, "I recognize this room, though."
And then I walk out and I look behind me and I'm --
That's the Pentagon sign.
I'm actually doing a --
and I see Barbara Starr of CNN
and the first question is Saudi Arabia.
-Oh, boy.
-The second question is, "How do you solve Saudi Arabia?"
I'm like, "Okay, I don't know. Did we get the same memo?"
[ Laughter ]
Because, I didn't -- [ Applause ]
And it was 32 minutes.
-Wow! -32 minutes at the Pentagon.
And I still didn't quite appreciate it until afterwards
when I saw photos and it's me standing in front of the panel.
I know that sounds stupid, but I really didn't appreciate it
until I see the photos and go,
"No, I was actually doing a press conference."
-I just like to think of an editor saying,
"Who gave these quotes?"
And they were like, "It was Gerard Butler today."
-Exactly. [ Laughter ]
Oh, yeah.
There was even a headline saying --
I saw it after, but it said,
"Gerard Butler speaks live from the Pentagon in a few minutes."
And you go, "That's -- I see that with Trump, I see that,
but Gerard Butler speaks live"?
Like, what's he got to say?
-I will say, like, five years ago,
that crawl on CNN I would think is weird.
Now anything, I'm like, whatever.
-That's true. That's true.
-That's not crazier than anything else.
[ Applause ]
Did you actually go --
You went out on a submarine just to do a little research.
-Yeah. I went out with the director, Donovan Marsh.
Went out on this -- it was one of the most,
maybe the most incredible experiences I ever had
going out for three days underway from Pearl Harbor.
And we did all the maneuvers that we do in the movie.
So battle stations and deep dives
and fire drills, et cetera.
But when we first went out --
one of the drills they do is man overboard.
But they do man overboard.
They're not going to throw a man overboard every time,
so they throw a bag of popcorn.
-Yeah, right. -Into the ocean, right?
-That's far more disposable. -Yeah, yeah.
And then they spend the next four minutes
trying to rescue this popcorn from the ocean.
[ Laughter ]
This 8,000-ton sub that stops, maneuvers back, forward,
and then somebody climbs out of the hatch
and dives into the water and grabs the popcorn
before, hopefully, it bursts.
-I feel like if a boat was going by and saw that,
they would just think, "I can't believe that's the only popcorn
they have on that submarine." [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, we did eat that popcorn.
Yeah, we dried it out in the microwave and then we had it.
And then the captain also lit up a cigar before we went out.
He was like, "Okay, this is what we're going to do."
So we lit up a cigar.
I'm thinking, "This is insane."
I'm on top of a hunter killer submarine
and feeling a bit queasy, though, and all I hear is --
[ Grunting ]
And I turn around and I'm looking at the captain, like,
"Is that Donovan?"
And Donovan is over the back, throwing up.
-That's your director? -Our director, Donovan,
is throwing up on the edge of the tower.
Gone was that hope that we could
pretend to be bad-ass movie people.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
I would say you played right into the stereotype
that the Navy had of you, yeah.