Austin Butler Says It’s A ‘Privilege And Honor’ To Portray Real People In ‘Masters Of The Air’

Austin Butler’s latest role is taking him to the skies.

The 32-year-old actor is portraying Major Gale “Buck” Cleven in “Masters of the Air,” a role he filmed right after he wrapped “Elvis.”

While talking to Access Hollywood at the show’s Los Angeles premiere, he revealed what it was like getting into character after portraying the King of Rock and Roll.

“I just was filled with the feeling of privilege and honor to get to bring this story to life,” he told Access. “I was such a huge fan of Band of Brothers and the fact that these were real people that we were playing, to get to do them justice was really such an honor to me,” Austin said.

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And switching from Elvis to Maj. Gale was quite the transition. He had to go from singing and dancing to learning how to play a pilot, which Austin told Access required training.

“We had two weeks of bootcamp and that was one, educating us on that time period and on World War II and on the people we were playing and also the equipment, the technical aspects of everything and it was physical you know. It was all the kind of physical things that come with bootcamp, the running and the pushups and what not, so we had a lot of that,” he said.

But in between training and filming the stars of the series had a fun competition.

“It was basically, who could get from the ground to the cockpit fastest and I’m very competitive, so I won,” he said.

The first episode of “Masters of the Air” drops on AppleTV+ on Jan. 26.