When Rory Millikin first met Jeremy Renner a few years ago, he had no idea who the “Avengers” star was. Millikin was raving about Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” and when Renner explained he one of the main actors, Millikin insisted, “Nope, that wasn’t you.”
Millikin told TheWrap that Renner was amused instead of offended and said, “Either we’re never going to see each other again or we’re going to be best friends.” The two did end up becoming best friends and now co-star and co-produce “Rennervations” on Disney+.
In the heartwarming docuseries, the two men team up with a crew of builders and various charitable organizations to transform decommissioned vehicles like buses and fire engines into mobile music studios, a water filtration unit and more, aided by international stars including Vanessa Hudgens, Anthony Mackie and Indian actor Anil Kapoor.
TheWrap recently caught up with Millikin in an interview about the show’s origins, its production and the context of its airing after Renner’s snowplow accident in January.
TheWrap: How did he first pitch the show to you?
Rory Millikin: He always had an idea of making the vehicles into cool business ideas geared towards either community or children. And then the idea came around to helping kids and doing this on a bigger scale. We started talking about a show and how it would work, how we could leverage organizations that help kids. The biggest concern was he did not want the spotlight on him. He’s a really private guy. [When execs suggested the series be more focused on Jeremy], he put his foot down and said, ‘Don’t even try to go that route. I’m out, forget it.’ He just put that fire out immediately.
He wanted to reach out with his network of charities and organizations he works with like Big Brothers and Sisters and motivate people to get off the couch and contribute to their community. It was really about inspiring and motivating people to get involved and not about him.
How hard was it to pull this off on such a tight turnaround?
He has huge shooting schedules with ‘Mayor Kingstown’ and things like that. So there was a really small window if he was going to do this to get it done. So the team they put together — AK and Roxy and Merri — they got pulled in immediately, and they were thrown into this cauldron.
There were always cameras rolling. We were always miked. So there was never, ‘Here’s the scene, here’s what you do.’ They just filmed in real-time. Everything had to be fluid and real. These timelines were under so much pressure, that there was genuine fear that we weren’t going to get it done before Jeremy had to go to his other job. So these guys are going 18 hours, 20 hour days around the clock. Some of them were sleeping on couches that were set up in this huge warehouse with these vehicles are side by side. There’s sparks going 24 hours a day. I genuinely don’t know how they pulled this off.
Watching the first episode when Merri talks about surviving her own horrific car accident, it’s chillingly similar to what happened to Jeremy.
Another cool thing with the builders, which we did not learn until the end, was that they had experiences eerily parallel to the organizations that we were working with. Bender, our head builder, was in the foster care system. He would be tearing up as he’s building the bus for the orphanage and we learned he’d been bounced through the whole system and that’s why this was so important to him.
I mean, the parallels with Jeremy’s accident when you look back with Merri’s – horrific accidents, they were both in comas, rebuilt body parts, and she has titanium through her body. So each builder who didn’t know each other had similar stories. No one knew the person next to them had an incredible story that related to theirs as it related to this vehicle. [The producers] don’t want to show a bunch of people crying. So they didn’t show it, but there were a lot of tears, genuine tears and stories being exchanged.
And I thought, ‘Wow, the universe has a weird way of bringing people into important projects, things that actually are here to do something good for humanity.’
How hard was it to find a home for this series, since it’s kind of a hybrid?
It was difficult to pitch. It’s not a build show. It’s not a charitable show. It’s a personal journey show, sort of, but it’s more about inspiring, informing, and educating people on how they can find other organizations that are right in their backyard to help their community or help kids.
And as dads, Jeremy and I have problems trying to find content for our kids so we can all sit down as a family and watch. Now you’ve got this really cool, new [series]. So this is the place it should be. It had to be Disney, right? That’s who they are.
Do you envision a second season
Oh, God, yeah. I can’t wait. Jeremy said to me, ‘How cool would this be that we got to go help people?’ We get to travel together. We hang out together all the time. It’s just like our kitchen talks in the evening about life philosophy, kids and what we want to do the world itself, but we got to do it. And this is part of our job. Because how cool is that?’
I became great friends with Anil Kapoor and text every week. Anil wants me to come stay with him over the India and spend the summer there and I can’t wait to go. It’s that magical of a place.
What kind of impact has the show had on you?
When you get off that road trip, and the whole whirlwind of it, you don’t see the big picture. When I got back from India, I sat there by myself in my room and just started weeping at how fortunate I was. I realized that this is probably the most important thing I’ve ever done to help kids other than my own, and probably will ever get a chance to do.
I was blessed to come along and be a co-pilot on it. You shake your head and think to yourself, if there’s ever gonna be a pearly gates moment, and they’re gonna go through the pretty sure this might be the one that gets me in.
The first three episodes of “Rennervations” are now streaming on Disney+
