Mark Wahlberg Gets Up at 3:30 a.m. to Stay Disciplined

Mark Wahlberg

Mark Wahlberg, The Departed and Lone Survivor star, 52, who has also demonstrated his penchant for comedy in Ted and Instant Family, combines the action genre with some laughs in The Family Plan (Dec. 15 on Apple TV+). Unbeknownst to his wife (Michelle Monaghan) and three kids, Dan Morgan (Wahlberg) previously was an elite government assassin tasked with eliminating the world’s deadliest bad guys. Almost 20 years ago, he put that life behind him to become “normal,” until his photo appears on social media and his past enemies track him down, which sends the Morgan family on a road trip to Las Vegas and, hopefully, safety.

Parade sat down with Wahlberg to discuss his career, his family and, of course, The Family Plan.

Walter Scott: This is a comedy, but it also combines with action. Does that make it the best of both worlds? 

It was fun. Obviously, tons of action, comedy, having teenagers, all that stuff. It was a lot of fun and I loved working with Michelle, and I loved working with Simon [Cellan Jones], the director.

Tell me about Dan. He has this history as an assassin, but he’s remade himself into a family man, who people see as a wuss. Did you relate to him? 

Look, you're always trying to be the best parent you can. I'm trying to be the best husband I can. I'm super overprotective of my kids, so yeah, there are lots of ways I related to Dan. Having to take my son’s video game away from him every night to make sure he goes to bed at a decent hour. There were lots of things that I could relate to.

Can you even imagine keeping a secret from your wife, Rhea, like Dan did from his wife for 18 years?

No, no. That wouldn’t go over well.

Every year, Dan and his wife go to the Twisted Cyclone roller coaster to celebrate their anniversary. Do you have a tradition like that? 

My wife and I, we're pretty routine; we have lots of things that we do with our routine. We go to the gym together, we go to church together, we do lots of stuff. We holiday and do lots of things.

Michelle Monaghan was terrific in her role. Did her experience on Mission: Impossible make her the perfect blend of suburban housewife but also with the necessary grit to fight for her family? 

You know what? I really didn't even think about that. I had worked with Michelle before on Patriots Day. We absolutely love her. She's so sweet, she's so talented, she's so funny and she's really game to try anything, but I hadn't even really thought about that. I just thought she'd be perfect, and we have great chemistry together, so we're all huge fans of her.

This is a road movie in part. How much of it was actually shot on the road and how much was maybe CGI? 

We shot in Atlanta and in my new hometown of Vegas. We filmed bits on the outskirts of Atlanta. And then, of course, in Las Vegas and we went out to Hoover Dam. That’s as far out as we went.

Does your family enjoy road trips? 

Not that much. My wife and I don't mind. We drive to our daughter’s horse shows and stuff like that, so there's that kind of road tripping, but to get all of them in the car, no. Going for four, five, six hours a day for multiple days that would not go over well.

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W.C. Fields is famously quoted about not working with kids and animals. But this isn’t your first film with kids. And then you have Arthur the King coming up, with a dog. Why come back for more? 

With Arthur, the dog was so good. It was incredible, and even with the kids, I think the toughest thing to do in the movie was the supermarket fight, trying to convince the child not to cry while in the middle of two grown men pretending to fight full-on with weapons and everything else. That was the most difficult and frustrating part and that was pretty early on, but all of the kids that we had cast were outstanding.

You used a real baby for those fight scenes, not just a doll? 

You’d be surprised how much they wanted to have the real baby. We obviously stuck to all the SAG regulations and requirements, but we definitely still tried to have a real child in as much as possible.

In addition to acting, you've also taken on producing projects. Some are for you to act in, but do you also want to create things for other people? 

Absolutely. Even as early on as Entourage, being able to produce stuff and give people opportunities to showcase their talent and their abilities was very rewarding.

What do you like about it that’s different from acting? 

The preparation requirements are very different; being able to sit back and watch other people, and looking from the eye of the lens as opposed to being in the moment as a performer…both can be very fulfilling.

You are also taking on The Six Billion Dollar Man. What went into your decision to take on the iconic role? 

It was one of those things where you have lots of people into these wish-fulfillment roles. There was tons of stuff going on with superheroes and all that stuff, but I was never really interested. I wouldn't have the courage to walk out of my trailer with the spandex suit and a cape on. So, trying to find something that I felt had that wish-fulfillment but was also very grounded, felt real and felt like it was something that could be a possibility.

Bionics are so much improved from when Lee Majors did the role. 

Oh, my gosh, yeah. It's been incredible to watch and visit various projects and laboratories. It's been incredible to see.

Did you talk to Lee Majors? 

I’ve spoken to Lee on a number of occasions. Unfortunately, most of the time I had to call Lee and tell him, “Well, it's not happening yet but we're not giving up hope.”

Might he make a cameo? 

We would love that, and I know he would love that. We’ve just got to make sure that the timing and everything works out, but we're pursuing that.

You’ve said you might slow down on acting. Is that still the plan? 

Acting and movies in general are taking me all over the world, which has been a pro and a con. Now being a dad, I've had to be away from my family for quite some time. So, the idea of building a studio here in Nevada, being able to work from home…I didn't say that I want to stop acting but [slow down] the pace that I was working at and being pulled to locations all over the world. I shot in London, Croatia and also Australia. Those aren't the kinds of locations where you can go home for the weekend. I prefer to be able to drive to work rather than having to fly miles.

Speaking of Nevada, I read that you were trying to sell your property there. Is it somewhere you still want to live? 

I still live here. What happened was I had bought some land to build a house and then I also bought a temporary home. We wanted to move to a different temporary home, so we sold the original temporary home and moved into a different temporary home. We just then put it in the trust, so we didn't have to have all of our information and business out there, so people didn't know that we were still living in Nevada.

What do you like about not being in L.A. anymore? 

My kids are driving. Being able to keep a better eye on them, especially the older kids. There are so many different directions to go off and things to do and trouble to find. Obviously, I miss the weather, miss my friends, and my local hangouts and all that stuff but I really had moved to L.A. to pursue my career in film and acting, and I haven’t made many movies in L.A. in the entire time that I've been there, so I figured I could always go wherever I had to go for work. I wanted to give [my kids] the best chance to succeed, just focus on their interests.

Your faith is very important to you and through your Catholic prayer app, Hallow, you can share it with others. What kinds of things do you include on the app? 

There's tons of stuff on there. We’re doing a program encouraging people to pray more and connect with each other. We did a whole fasting challenge for Lent and there's 10,000 prayers and meditations. There's lots and lots to do on Hallow, which is trying to connect people, especially in difficult times.

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Was it your idea or you were approached to do it? 

We actually met the founders of Hallow when I was promoting Father Stu and I thought it would be a great way to reconnect people with their faith, whether it be lapsed Catholics or introducing people to having a relationship with God and just being more spiritual in general.

You’ve said that learning discipline has been a key to your success and one of those disciplines is getting up before the sun–like 3:30 a.m.—for your workouts. Is that still your schedule? Do you have a cheat day? 

Yes, today was my day off. I woke up at 4:30.

So, you do have a cheat day? 

I slept in an extra hour, but I've also done all my recovery stuff, my prayer time, reading my scripts and working on the script that I'm doing for a commercial today. I'll be fasting today, so I won't eat any food all day, so I wouldn't call it really a cheat day. Look, I always get at least eight hours of sleep. Sleep is just as important if not more important than exercise, so finding that balance, especially getting older, I'm just trying to work on longevity and being as healthy as I can as long as I can.

So, you have to go to bed like at 8-9 o'clock? 

I went to bed last night at just before 8.

It must be tough to get your kids in bed then. 

Well, listen, I've got a 20-year-old [Ella], an about-to-be 18 [Michael], a 15 [Brendan] and a 13-year-old [Grace]. I can't wait up to give my two boys —my 17- and 15-year-old —bedtime stories and tuck them in and expect them to go to sleep when I tell them. I just tell them no matter what, get enough rest because I will be knocking on the door at 6:30 in the morning to get you up for school. My 13-year-old, she's so disciplined and focused, she goes to bed before any of us. She doesn't want us to come and bother her. She wakes up to go to the barn and start her day caring for her horses and preparing for training.

She competes at horse shows, so there's travel with that. There’s a lot of travel. She’s homeschooled. She's full-time seven days a week at the barn. She's involved in every aspect of it, which is amazing. I always say to people it took me at least to my 30s to become disciplined and she is that way at 13.

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