The enemy of your enemy may be your friend, but even your enemy can turn into your best buddy. From the most cutthroat rivals to greatest pals, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone are arguably one of Hollywood’s most epic duos.
While the action icons started off on the wrong foot, their volatile feud ultimately swelled into a heartwarming friendship over the years.
Sylvester Stallone Couldn’t Handle Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Lulu…Uh What?
It’s not what you think it is (or what it sounds like) promise.
Two of the industry’s most predominant actors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone – who used to be out for each other’s proverbial blood – have come to forge a heartfelt bond full of inside jokes and playful jabs. So, when Stallone threatened to abduct his nemesis-turned-mate’s Lulu, Schwarzenegger quite proudly claimed that the former wouldn’t be able to handle it.
In a FOX 5 interview with Monica Barbaro about their comedy-action series FUBAR, Kevin McCarthy – a long-standing fan of both Schwarzenegger and Sly – had a message for The Terminator star from his friend.
Just a day before his interview with the former governor of California, McCarthy had been talking to Stallone, 78 when he’d asked the Rocky star if he had anything to say to Schwarzenegger, 76. “Tell him, if I don’t get my machine gun back I’m gonna kidnap his donkey,” Stallone said. In response, the Predator star claimed, “I can handle his machine guns any time. But he couldn’t handle my Lulu.”
I don’t think that he could handle Lulu, my donkey […] She would bite him, left and right, and trample all over him because you have to have real authority over this animal, and you have to show the love. I don’t think he’s capable of doing that with Lulu […] She would not go for that.
So, there you go. Lulu is the name of Schwarzenegger’s pet donkey who is unironically also a social media sensation and who Stallone jokingly threatened to kidnap if the former didn’t give him back his beloved machine gun.
The Story Behind Arnold Schwarzenegger Taking Sylvester Stallone’s Machine Gun
The Escape Plan stars may be friends today, but there was a time when the two would cross all limits of pettiness to prove themselves as the other’s superior. This meant an unremitting competition between literally everything – from who is more buffed up to who gets more dangerous weapons in films – and a dogged devotion towards wanting to be the ‘better’ hero.
So, as Schwarzenegger explained in the interview, both he and Stallone would battle it out over any and everything that they possibly could.
We used to compete…who had the biggest knives, who had the biggest muscles, who had the least amount of body fat, who had the biggest box-office grosses, who has the best movies, and who has the biggest machine guns…and the list goes on and on and on like that. And then we switched, sometimes guns…it could be that I still have one of his machine guns.
A machine gun in return for Lulu. Sounds like a fair deal, no? Perhaps not, since Schwarzenegger is of the firm belief that action legend Stallone would in fact, not be able to manage a donkey.