Austin Butler Breaks Down Working With Authentic WWII Fighter Planes in ‘Masters of the Air'

Elvis star Austin Butler sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss his upcoming role as a fighter pilot in Masters of the Air. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg produced the WWII-era series, now streaming on Apple TV+, as a spiritual follow-up to their HBO series Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

Butler stars as real-life pilot Major Gale “Buck” Cleven, who leads the 100th Bomb Group in the 8th Air Force’s retaliation against German forces. The show required Butler and his co-stars, including Callum Turner (The Boys in the Boat) and Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), to spend a great deal of time in the cockpit of B-17 fighter jets. According to Butler, the production made every effort to make the harrowing dogfights feel as real as possible for the cast.

“We were so fortunate, because we had technology called the volume screens [in the cockpit],” Butler said. “So it meant that there was high-definition imagery, and we could see flak on the horizon. We could see fighter jets flying by us, so it was such a gift as an actor.”

The Oscar nominee admitted there was very little acting going on during the aerial sequences, so realistic was the set design. “You’re just responding to what you’re seeing,” Butler marveled.

He went on to describe the process of shooting in the cockpit: “We were on a gimbal, so the entire plane was moving. You could suspend disbelief very quickly and actually feel like you’re flying the plane.”

Producer Hanks plucked Butler for the starring while they were still working together on Elvis. Butler recalled Hanks pitching him the role as a way to preserve his “mental health” after deeply immersing himself in playing the musical icon.

“You have immersed yourself so deeply in Elvis that, for your mental health, it would be wise to go straight into something else,” Butler recalled last August. “If you just jump off the train, you might have emotional whiplash…and, you know, I’ve got this thing I’m producing.”

The first three episodes of Masters of the Air are currently streaming on Apple TV+.