Chris Pratt is halfway through a set of 100 pullups, his hands like two giant meat puppets gripping the bar. We’re doing the Murph CrossFit Hero WOD in a gym he’s installed in the farmhouse he’s renting outside Atlanta. He’s been living here since October while filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the final installment of the trilogy, which has earned more than $1.6 billion at the box office worldwide and spawned a video game, multiple action figures, and a ride at Epcot. Though the Guardians also appear in this summer’s Thor: Love & Thunder, the end of an era is decidedly here.
“You want to be conscious and put a lot of effort into experiencing the moment,” Pratt offers. “Like, This is going away. I want to take it in. You can’t take it in any harder than just being present to it. So I’m being present.” Still, he finds the emotional resonance bubbling up at odd times. “The other day,” the 43-year-old says between sets, already laughing at himself, “Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback”—that’s Pratt’s hometown team—“he got traded to Denver. He’s been with Seattle for about ten years. Which has been about the duration of this.” He gestures to his surroundings. “I was like, ‘Wait, hold on, what happened?’ The emotion around the last ten years sort of coming to an end…I was in the most embarrassing way, like, ‘My quarterback leaves, so I’m gonna cry.’ It’s hitting me in moments like that.”
For Pratt—an aw-shucks Viking in Alo shorts, his massive legs threatening to split the fabric—this is a time of transition in many ways. His billion-dollar-grossing trilogy, concludes this summer with the release of Pratt and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, also just welcomed their second child together, Eloise. (Their daughter Lyla was born in 2020; Pratt has a son, Jack, with his first wife, Anna Faris.) The actor is by any measure phenomenally successful, responsible for something like $10 billion in box-office receipts if you include the films he’s been in. He’s beloved by everyone he’s ever worked with, too; midway through our interview, Pratt’s phone blows up with the text chain, a full seven years after that show’s finale. Yet today—and on other days recently, it seems—he’s been struggling to understand a disconnect between his perception of himself and who?”
