Inside “Bikeriders” Stars Austin Butler, Norman Reedus and Jodie Comer’s USO Army Base Trip

During “one of the most special press days I've ever been part of,” as Butler tells PEOPLE, ‘The Bikeriders’ team met soldiers, riders and veterans

As movie stars, Austin Butler, Norman Reedus and Jodie Comer don’t tend to have a typical work day. But even for them, riding in Black Hawk helicopters to and from an army base in the middle of the California desert is an unusual commute.

The cast of The Bikeriders (in theaters Friday) took movie press tours to the next level with their United Service Organizations trip to Fort Irwin Army Base on May 28. Joining Butler, 32, Reedus, 55, and Comer, 31, at the High Mojave Desert’s major military training ground were Bikeriders writer-director Jeff Nichols, members of the stars’ publicity and glam teams, staff from the movie’s distributor Focus Features, two social media experts and yours truly.

Needless to say, only the Army soldiers accompanying us are accustomed to wearing noise-canceling headphones and hovering above Los Angeles in iconic twin-engine helicopters — flown by pilots who aren’t afraid to give us some Top Gun-esque thrills along the way. (My stomach lurches just thinking about it).

Related: Tom Hardy and Austin Butler Form a Violent Biker Gang in ‘The Bikeriders’ Trailer

The trip’s purpose is to get Butler, Reedus, Comer and Nichols “as much Facetime with soldiers as possible,” as a USO staffer tells me at a delicious barbecue lunch, during which the stars participate in a virtual press conference with military communities across the U.S.

Plus, Army soldiers and their families aren’t the only inhabitants of Fort Irwin; the base shares an overlap with motorcycle clubs much like those in The Bikeriders.

Nichols, 45, was inspired by the 1968 photo book of the same name from journalist Danny Lyon, recreating its portraits of chain-smoking, leather-clad Midwesterners for the big screen. Butler and Reedus play members of the Vandals, an eventual gang led by a macho Tom Hardy, while Comer plays a suburban Chicagoan who gets swept up in their community of lost souls.

“A lot of soldiers are riders themselves,” Nichols tells me. The residents of Fort Irwin, collectively forging a sense of purpose and belonging like many pioneering Americans before them, "are our target audience,” he says.

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Under the glaring desert sun, the Bikeriders team shakes hands and poses for photos with soldiers who welcome them into Jeep-like light utility vehicles. First stop: The Box, a vast stretch of the desert the military uses for "the best-combined arms formations in history," per a foreboding sign at its border. An Army veteran and administrator explains that this is where soldiers train in often elaborate war games before deployment, using the most up-to-date gear and tactics and under the most grueling conditions.

Next, we drive to a tent-like structure where a team of Army medics demonstrates how they provide care for incapacitated comrades on the battlefield. Nichols and Comer are selected as volunteer demonstrators, tilting a dummy’s head to open airways and inserting a breathing tube. Many of us agree we would trust the Emmy-winning Killing Eve star in any medical emergency.

Then it’s time to check out the tanks — massive, looming, seemingly indestructible tanks whose guns swivel every which way. Butler grins with glee as he hops right down the hatch, into what he says is a surprisingly roomy interior.

Related: Austin Butler on Motorcycle Crash Filming The Bikeriders: 'All I Was Thinking About Was the Bike' (Exclusive)

But ask anyone on the tour for the highlight of the Army’s demonstrations and they’ll all say the K-9 unit. Military dog handlers introduce us to two beautiful but fearsome German Shepherds who proceed to chase and tackle another demonstrator before being ordered to heel. Nichols, causing all our jaws to drop and his publicist’s brow to furrow, volunteers for the same. Wearing a Marshmallow Man-like suit, he is instructed to antagonize a pooch, turn and run for his life. The dog chomps the filmmaker’s arm and takes him down while every person in the Bikeriders entourage records on their camera phones, stunned and delighted. 

“This has been one of the most special press days I've ever been part of,” Butler tells me as we’re cooling off back in the USO’s facility. “Just getting to meet all these heroes out here,” the Elvis Oscar nominee adds, “I’m so impressed and so humbled.”

As we head to the base’s movie theater, where the cast will introduce a Bikeriders screening, Comer says that she feels “very lucky” and “overwhelmed in a good way” to be here.

“It feels like a beautiful part of the job,” reflects the English actress. “You do the acting part, which is what you sign up for, but then you end up finding yourselves in these kind of unlikely places and getting to have an insight into a very different world.”

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“It's nice to make something that's appreciated by somebody that's in a position like this,” says Reedus after meeting a group of veterans in a motorcycle club outside the theater. “This is a good audience.”

As we head back to the deafening roar of our Black Hawk helicopters, soon to take off toward the setting sun, I ask Nichols for takeaways from this extraordinary day: Is an Army base at all like the set of a movie? “When it's a well-run film set, there is 100 percent a pecking order and a dissemination of information to get everything to move,” the filmmaker responds. “I would invert that to say a film set [is emulating] an Army base.”

Following its 2023 Telluride Film Festival premiere, The Bikeriders is in theaters Friday, June 21. 

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