Orville Peck Talks ‘Street Fighter’ Villain Vega, His Butt and the Raw Sobriety Songs on ‘Mule’

Orville Peck would like you to look at his butt. For the art.

“I told the director from the start, I was like, ‘I think we really should show off the butt,’” says Peck, who squatted his way into Vega’s matador tights for “Street Fighter,” the new live-action take on the ’90s arcade staple, in theaters Oct. 16. “I think it’s going to be only to our benefit.”

It’s character work, technically. Vega, the claw-wielding Spaniard with the porcelain mask and a serious mirror habit, has been read as queer-coded by fans for decades, and for Peck, the role reaches back further than most. Long before the fringe, the Grand Ole Opry and his Broadway run in “Cabaret,” he was a low-income gay kid in South Africa, playing “Street Fighter” with his older brothers and picking the pretty, dangerous one every time.

Now he’s about to hit the road with “Mule,” his most personal album yet, a song-by-song account of addiction and recovery that takes the mask off in a way no costume change could.

Below, Peck talks about Vega as a childhood queer awakening, why he thinks the character is “like an incel,” singing about his sobriety on “Mule” and when the mask comes off.

Last time we spoke, you told me that when someone shuts you out, you want to kick the door down and not just get a seat at the table, but put your feet up on the table.

[Laughs.] Sounds like something I'd say.

Is a gay country singer playing a claw-wielding fighter in a Hollywood action movie the biggest door that you've knocked down yet?

I mean, when you put it that way… I don't know if that's the biggest one I've knocked down because I think in my mind it's the same as when I got cast on Broadway in “Cabaret.” I think people were like, “Why are they casting a country singer?” But for me, those things feel natural to me because I grew up as an actor. I think “Street Fighter” is a very specific type of performing. It's this heightened type of character work and that stuff is really fun for me. So these were easy doors.

I was a low-income little gay kid in South Africa. The fact that I was at the Chinese Theatre at a premiere for a movie where I’m playing one of the most iconic villains in fighting games, that’s an insane, insane thing.

— Orville Peck

These are doors that opened for me, which was actually really incredible. And it's a real testament to Kitao Sakurai, the director, and Cale [Boyter] from Legendary Entertainment. They were so truly brave and open-minded about this casting, to the point that everyone reacted and they thought that these people had lost their minds casting all these comedians and musicians. But they were so on the nose right about their choices. As soon as we all got to set, we could see everyone was so their character and such a right pick for each of these roles.

You told the director that playing the “Street Fighter” game as a kid was part of your sexual awakening. What drew you to Vega as a kid?

I have two older brothers. We would play a lot of “Street Fighter,” and I was always drawn to these mysterious, I'll say, sexually ambiguous type characters. I was such an “X-Men” fan as a kid, and my favorite “X-Men” was Gambit because I always felt like he had this bisexual energy. I was not allowed to say it when I was a kid, obviously, but I was drawn towards these characters that I could almost see myself in a bit. That's what's so beautiful about something like “Street Fighter.” It was this amazing game where they had all these different characters. And in the game, none of them are necessarily better than the other for any reason, other than the fact that you can choose which one appeals to you. And Vega was mine, which I think makes a lot of sense. I think he's an honorary queer icon.

Fans have long read Vega as queer-coded. How did you explore his sexuality as the person playing him?

For Vega, his focus is elevating himself to the level that he believes he should always be at, which is better than everybody else. He doesn't have the time to even be thinking sexually about other people because he looks down on everyone so badly. I don't think anybody could ever be good enough. So I think he's like an incel in a way, the way I played him.

He's so focused on just his own end game and his own superiority. I don't think he could ever find someone that maybe he would be attracted to because he's just repulsed by everyone except for himself. So I think that's where I go at with him in terms of sexuality. What's his sexuality? I don't even think it's on his mind because I don't think he has the capacity for it. I think he's just so narcissistic and egotistical. In my mind, that's how he plays. That's how he thinks.

But you're aware, though, of some bisexual energy there, right? 

Yeah, I mean, he's European. I think he would go there. He's Spanish. I don't think it bothers him. [Laughs.]

It's like whoever, whatever, whenever.

Yeah. He's in the mirror doing some weird “American Psycho”-type stuff.

And he's a villain, so how much do we want him on our team?

Exactly. I mean, listen, I've met some narcissistic gays. They exist.

I've been loving the internet lately because it’s been paying a lot of attention to your Vega glutes. Was that part of the training plan or a happy accident or just something you keep up with?

Well, yeah. I mean, listen, when I got the role, the first thing I did is I wanted to go into the other source materials and just think about this character, what was the original intention of him, all that stuff. And in the anime and the series, he's in these matador tights all the time, and his legs are always really big and beautiful and his butt's always out there. And I just thought, “I got to start really doing some squats and get that.” I told the director from the start, "I think we really should show off the butt because I think it's going to be only to our benefit."

But also, there's no other male character in “Street Fighter” that has this sort of self-obsession. And I think he's the kind of person who probably stares at himself in the mirror for five hours a day and admires himself. He wants people to admire him. That's where his worth comes from. So yeah, it was intentional in terms of working on it for sure. I wanted to really put some effort in down there.

How many of your fight scenes did you get to do yourself?

Everything. So aside from the acrobatics, because of course I'm not doing that, I had an incredible stunt double, and he is an amazing Cirque du Soleil acrobat. So all of the wall jumps and things like that, the stuff on the wires is him flying on top of the bar and those things. But in terms of fighting, I got to do a pass at every single fight. 

When I watched the movie the other night, I can always tell which is me and which is my stunt double. There's a little thing that I can see that I won't reveal, but I was really pleased to see a lot of my fighting was me. 

Is that just wild, knowing how much little Orville would have loved to do this? 

Yeah, it's incredible. Listen, I was a low-income little gay kid in South Africa. The fact that I was at the Chinese Theatre at a premiere for a movie where I'm playing one of the most iconic villains in fighting games, that's an insane, insane thing. It's actually very hard to process, but it doesn't escape me. A lot of us were really just like, "Wow, I can't believe we're here and this is what we're getting to do." We get it. We are aware of how special that is.

You grew up with straight guys as friends through skateboarding and punk bands. This set had WWE wrestlers, 50 Cent, Jason Momoa. Did that feel familiar to you?

It did. That's easy for me, those kind of guys, because that's exactly what I grew up with. But yeah, man, the really lovely thing is everybody in the cast became such good friends because we were in Australia. There's really nothing else to do except hang out with one another. We would all go to set to watch each other on days we weren't even filming. And then after the set, we would all go have dinner. On the weekends, we'd hang out. So we became a really tight-knit group of friends.

We still have a group chat that we always text. I mean, I text with [WWE wrestler] Cody Rhodes on a very regular basis. I love Cody to death. I made a lifelong friend in Callina Liang, who plays Chun-Li, which was awesome because we got to be best friends off set and then mortal enemies on set. So it's this funny dynamic we get to have. But I do like me some simple-dog straight man energy. I know how to handle it, for sure.

On “Mule,” you take the mask off figuratively. How does it feel performing songs this close to your life?

It's hard sometimes. It’s funny: You think that you'll become desensitized to it after doing it enough or whatever, and it won't feel as raw. It still does feel raw. Some nights it'll be fun, but then some nights it'll hit me for some reason, for sure. I think when you're singing about things that you're not necessarily proud to sing about, it feels sometimes like shame comes in and feelings of remorse, and I'm still constantly making amends to people in my life, even now from that era when I was just such a mess. So it's forever evolving, but yeah, it is hard sometimes, but it's cathartic. It's a good thing.

What is the one song that is the hardest for you to perform from it?

“The Fall” is hard still. The bridge is pent-up anger and resentment coming out for a moment, and I don't think I've ever written a song in that way. When I get to that part in the song, I still feel like old resentments come up, and it reminds me I have to constantly clean house because that can so easily take me back to this victim mentality and this addiction. So that part is interesting because as I'm singing it, I feel a shift literally within myself that reminds me, oh yeah, you have this anger and this resentment that you have to always be in check about.

We've seen you maskless now on stage in “Cabaret,” and you're wearing a different mask in “Street Fighter.” Where does the mask stand for you now at this moment in your career, especially with this new album out?

I think it's a permanent and important part of my expression as an artist. For “Cabaret,” the distinction for me was that I was playing a character who obviously does not need to wear a mask and I didn't want to make it about me. I wanted to play the character. So for more acting that I do in the future, if there is a role that comes up that I really want to play and it doesn't involve a mask, I'll take the mask off for that. And then I'll put it back on for when it's my personal expression.

I've become a lot more comfortable with the idea of that. I used to be so, so pedantic about that, but I love acting. It was the first kind of expression I ever did when I was young, and it's always been something I wanted to return to. So yeah, of course. I mean, I think the mask will come off if it's required to come off, for sure.

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