In 2005, Michael Chiklis, best known at that time for playing Vic Mackey on The Shield, starred as Benjamin Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, in Fantastic Four. Despite that movie and its sequel being panned by critics, Chiklis looks back fondly on his time in the Marvel film series. However, while working on that first movie, he nearly quit playing The Thing due to getting claustrophobia so bad that a psychiatrist had to get involved.
Michael Chiklis joined his Fantastic Four co-star Ioan Gruffud, who played Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mister Fantastic, for the “Back to the Baxter Building” panel at New York Comic Con (via Variety). He kicked off the panel by sharing how it took five hours for the movie’s costume team to transform him into The Thing, and wearing the suit quickly made him claustrophobic. As he explained:
Once they locked the Thing with the glue, I couldn’t get out of it. Once they glued the hands on, I’m trapped in this suit with no zipper. I’m thirsty all the time because as soon as you have that thing, the latex at its thickest was at the chest, so it didn’t breathe at all. Immediately, my body core would go up, my body temperature would rise, and I would start to feel a little panicked sometimes. I’m not claustrophobic at all. But in that situation, I was.
Just thinking about what he went through is stressing me out. It’s no wonder the normally not-claustrophobic Michael Chiklis developed that fear of enclosed spaces, because that Thing suit sounds like one of the most uncomfortable experiences ever. Unfortunately, it was at a time when the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby-created character couldn’t be fully realized through CGI, as would later be done with Jamie Bell and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s versions. Practical was the only way to go.
The Thing suit at least looked amazing, and learning what Chiklis went through makes me all the more impressed with the performance he gave. However, it was only by meeting with a psychiatrist that the actor didn’t quit working on Fantastic Four, continuing:
She [the psychiatrist] gave me a bunch of different things to get me out of my head and into the room. Even with that, there were two occasions where I flipped out and said, ‘I got to get out.’ They pulled everything off me, and that cost us hours. I didn’t mean it, I just was flipping out.
I’m sure most people in Michael Chiklis’ shoes at that time would have flipped out at least once, if not way more times than he did. Although he wasn’t the first actor to play Ben Grimm in live action, his portrayal was the first to be seen by a wide audience, as the 1994 Fantastic Four movie starring Michael Bailey Smth in the role was never officially released. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer followed two years after its predecessor, and its commercial underperformance resulted in a third movie being cancelled.
However, both Michael Chiklis and Ioan Gruffud expressed interest at the panel, in respectively reprising The Thing and Mister Fantastic for Avengers: Secret Wars, which comes out on December 17, 2027. If that happens, we’ll be sure to let you know, but count on the current Fantastic Four team to be present in both that upcoming Marvel movie and next year’s Avengers: Doomsday.