John Cena would like to set the record straight: he did not intentionally pop a wheelie in a VW bus full of his co-stars. The actor is one of the leads in Apple TV's Matchbox: The Movie, a high-octane action-comedy inspired by Mattel's beloved toy cars. The film follows five childhood friends who reunite to take down an international crime ring, mostly by driving very cool cars very fast. But Cena, who plays a CIA super-spy, insists he was misled about his behind-the-wheel duties.
"I was swindled," Cena says with a laugh. "I thought by being in Matchbox, I would do a ton of driving." Instead, his character spends most of the movie fighting off waves of bad guys, leaving the driving to his co-stars—including Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Arturo Castro, and Teyonah Parris. Biel, a veteran of 2000s action flicks, brings her Emmy-nominated thriller chops to the role, while Richardson, Castro, and Parris add comedic and dramatic depth.
But Cena did get a few chances to get behind the wheel. During a sequence shot in the Sahara, he was let loose on Land Rovers. "They let me beat the shit out of those Land Rovers in the desert," he says. And in the film's climax, speeding through Budapest, Cena's task was to drive a vintage VW bus a few yards and stop on a mark—while his co-stars rode along. That's when things got interesting.
Months later, sitting in a conference room at New York's Waldorf-Astoria, Parris recalls the moment with a mix of humor and terror. "They're all chill, cool," she says, "and I'm like 'Ahhhhh!' in the back." Richardson jumps in: "She didn't say 'ahhh!' She said—" The cast erupts in unison: "'Woo woo woo woo woo!'" Parris explains, "I was still on camera, and I was calm; I looked calm. You can't see that I'm freaking out, but it's still expelling [the fear] from my body. But I will say, John hit the mark every time. We were safe. No one else was scared. Just me."
Then Cena drops the bombshell: "I think at one point, I wheelie'd the bus." The back end lifted off the ground, a happy accident of physics. "I actually wheelied the front, because the engine's in the back," he explains. "I would speed up to the mark, but then I would have to reverse to go to the mark. I hit reverse, and we're trying to go to the mark, and [director Sam Hargrave] comes running around with a note, so I stop." The result was a brief, unintentional wheelie that had everyone laughing—and Hargrave, a stunt-coordinator-turned-director known for the practical-stunt-heavy Extraction films, running over to check on them. His reaction? "Man, that was cool. Is everybody okay?"
Matchbox is a movie about people being pushed out of their comfort zones, and the shoot was no different. Biel, despite her action experience, had never done tricky on-camera driving. Castro, whose previous stunt work mostly involved "shooting people or getting shot at" ("I've died a lot on film," he jokes), was pulled down a deserted highway on a motorcycle as real big-rig trucks boxed him in. Richardson, known for his comedic roles in The Afterparty, Detroiters, and Veep, gets his own action hero moment, jumping out of a moving truck on the open road.
Parris, who starred in the MCU's The Marvels, is no stranger to action, but her experience has mostly been on blue screen and green screen sets. "I've done a lot of wire work and a lot of flying sorts of action," she says. However, Matchbox "was very different, in that I was mostly watching these guys do very practical, real-life stunts." When characters catch fire—which happens to both Castro and Richardson—it's not CGI; the effects are practical, and their faces are visible. Parris had to find the "balance of me, Teyonah, who was very scared, with trying to allow Charmaine to enjoy bits of this."
Even Cena, an action vet, was challenged by one terrifying stunt he never wants to repeat. But beyond the stunts, Matchbox is a throwback to the colorful, lighthearted action films of the '80s and '90s—the kind where an average person suddenly finds themselves in extraordinary circumstances, like driving a bomb-filled bus through L.A. or going up against the Terminator. It also nods to ensemble classics like Armageddon, where unlikely teams come together to achieve a goal and learn from each other.
"There's a lot of action going on, but there is also a lot of heart," Parris says. "There's a lot about relationships and friendships, and that is the driving force for all of the action. I felt that our director Sam Hargrave and the writers did a really great job keeping that strong." Castro echoes that sentiment: "Sometimes you hear that something's an ensemble comedy and it's really not. But this was such a true ensemble, in that everybody had their moment."
Matchbox: The Movie is set to hit Apple TV+ in October 2026, and fans of Cena's latest action-comedy are already buzzing. For those who miss the days of practical stunts and '80s nostalgia, this one promises to deliver. And if you're curious about the mixed early reviews, you might want to check out what the cast has to say about the experience.
