Ben Wang Reveals Shocking Injury on “Karate Kid: Legends” Set: 'Did You Know Fingertips Regenerate?' (Exclusive)

Ben Wang knew that starring other Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio successful a martial arts movie meant a imaginable consequence of injury. Still, he could not person prepared for what happened connected nan group of Karate Kid: Legends.

“I sliced disconnected nan extremity of my pinky,” Wang, 25, tells PEOPLE astatine CinemaCon 2025. “They regenerate. Did you cognize your fingertips regenerate?”

Legends is nan sixth movie successful nan Karate Kid franchise, which began successful 1984 pinch nan original starring Macchio, 63, arsenic Daniel LaRusso. He and Chan, 71, playing Mr. Han from 2010’s The Karate Kid, return for a big-screen installment group aft nan events of tv hit Cobra Kai.

Stepping into a beloved cinematic universe, Wang says his enthusiasm for nan task outweighed immoderate fearfulness of costarring pinch surface legends. “Jackie Chan, he was my first thought of what an character is, arsenic a kid is,” nan American Born Chinese prima says. The 2010 movie “was for illustration perfection for me. Jaden Smith was truthful awesome successful it.”

The original Karate Kid and its sequels were favorites of Wang’s aunt — who asked him to get Macchio’s autograph erstwhile he was formed successful Legends, he recalls. “She showed each of them to maine erstwhile I was successful mediate schoolhouse and it's a awesome franchise. It has a batch of goodwill. There's fans — and they're very adamant fans. So we want to make judge that we make a movie that serves them well.”

How precisely did he prolong specified an alarming, finger-slicing injury? “I do a crazy rotation connected apical of a array and I person to drawback myself successful nan end,” Wang explains. “They wrap a ligament astir you and there's a giant, burly dude who yanks that thing. And it benignant of scraped my digit and whacked it against nan bottommost of nan array that had metallic bracings.”

To clarify, he adds, “You cognize erstwhile they trial weapon sharpness and they propulsion a carrot into it and you watch nan portion travel off? That benignant of happened. It was a existent bloody mess.”

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But Wang is acold from complaining. On 1 of nan dozens of action movies Chan has starred successful since nan 1970s, he collapsed his fibula, nan young prima points out. “I didn't break my fibula. I had an owie connected my pinky."

Karate Kid: Legends, costarring Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen and more, is successful theaters May 30. Among Wang’s different upcoming projects are The Long Walk (in theaters Sept. 12) and The Hunger Games: Sunrise connected nan Reaping (in theaters Nov. 20, 2026).