Austin Butler Says He 'Would Love to' Learn to Fly After Filming “Masters of the Air”

The actor stars as a WWII pilot in the upcoming Apple TV+ series

Austin Butler wants to take to the skies!

“I would love to,” the actor tells PEOPLE of learning to fly at Wednesday's Masters of the Air premiere at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles.

The star caught the aviation bug while filming the Apple TV+ miniseries about U.S. Air Force pilots operating behind enemy lines during World War II, which also stars Callum Turner and Anthony Boyle.

“I'm rusty now but I feel like I could,” Butler, 32, adds of the flying skills he picked up during filming.

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Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg also worked on the miniseries as executive producers and Butler tells PEOPLE it was a “pleasure” working with Hanks, 67.

“He approaches everything with such care and kindness and he does so much research and is just constantly reading about this period,” Butler says. “It's a pleasure working with him, whether he's in front of the camera or behind.”

Another of Butler’s costars, Barry Keoghan, 31, has also recently opened up about how the actors kept themselves entertained on the set of the historical drama.

“I learned him how to box,” Dublin-born Keoghan told GQ earlier this month of teaching the Elvis star some tricks. And according to Keoghan, Butler was “pretty good" at sparring.

The Irish star also shared with the outlet that being cast in Masters of the Air allowed him to realize a long-held dream.

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“I always wanted to play a pilot,” Keoghan shared, adding that he was partly inspired by watching Tom Hardy play an RAF fighter pilot in Dunkirk, while he was ground-bound as a British soldier in Christopher Nolan's 2017 film.

In Masters of the Air, Butler plays pilot Major Gale Cleven (a.k.a. Buck), who's part of the 100th Bomb Group in the U.S. Air Force. Nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth,” the unit took part in numerous “perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany” as they faced “frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air,” according to the official synopsis. 

The series is based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name and sets out to show the “psychological and emotional price paid by these young men as they helped destroy the horror of Hitler’s Third Reich.”

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A trailer released on Dec.6 teased the dramatic action and emotional tone of the series, with Major John Egan (Callum Turner) telling his men that they are responsible for “35 planes and 350 air crew men." At another point, he states that the 100th Bomb Group has been deployed "straight into Hitler's territory” in “the largest air armada ever assembled in the history of mankind.”

Along with Butler, Keoghan and Turner, Sawyer Spielberg, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook and Ncuti Gatwa also feature in the series.

The first two episodes of Masters of the Air premiere Jan. 24 on Apple TV+.

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