The comedically gifted, perennially ageless leading man Paul Rudd recently appeared on the cover of Men’s Health for an in-depth interview about his huge new movie Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, in which he shared the disciplined diet and training routine that he used to sculpt a superhero physique for his fourth movie outing as Scott Lang.
The accompanying photo shoot does a great job of showcasing Rudd’s charms—but as late night host Jimmy Fallon pointed out on Friday 10th February, Rudd’s Quantumania co-star Jonathan Majors may have upstaged him before he got anywhere near the Men’s Health cover.
In a tongue-in-cheek segment, Fallon pulled out Rudd’s cover image, then showed Majors’ own cover story, which features him emerging from a swimming pool in nothing but a pair of shorts, rippling physique on full display. (It should be noted for the record that Majors’ Men’s Health cover shoot proved so popular we ended up publishing even more of the unused images to satisfy the internet’s relentless thirst.)
“He’s by a pool, so they’re different,” joked Rudd, before Fallon produced another pair of images relating to the two actors’ morning routines. In his photo, Majors is drinking a protein shake in his kitchen while shirtless (again). In Rudd’s case, he’s fully clothed while posing with a glass of juice.
“It’s kind of the same,” he said. “They were like, do you want a chamomile tea or something, and I was like, what am I, a wimp?”
The comparisons continued, with Fallon pointing out that Majors demonstrated his core strength by hanging from a pullup bar upside down during his shoot. “It’s health and fitness, they want to see you, you know, working out,” explained Rudd. Which is why, when it came time to do his workout shoot, Rudd was photographed holding his bicycle.
“I was like, should I ride it? They’re like, why don’t you lift it up,” he said, adding that it’s heavier than it looks: “That’s an old-school, ten-speed bike! That’s not one of these newfangled, light, mountain bikes made of graphite!”
This friendly competition between Rudd and Majors is an extension of the dynamic they share in Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, an explosive opening to the next chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which will see Rudd’s Scott Lang face off against Majors’ near-omnipotent Kang the Conqueror. The movie will be released in the United States on February 17.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
