ET spoke to the pair about appearing together on screen, and their latest stadium tour with Mötley Crüe.
Tommy Lee is back onscreen, and this time as a strip club DJ. ET's Kevin Frazier spoke to the rockstar actor and his bandmate, Nikki Sixx, about their new horror film, The Retaliators, and hitting the road again with Mötley Crüe.
"I'll spend some time in some strip clubs and behind the turntables," Lee said of why the role was a perfect fit for him. "I don't know. I haven’t seen it, and if you blink, you might miss it, but I’m DJing in some club, a strip club."
While the film didn't take much convincing for Lee or Sixx, who helped write music for the project, getting back out on the road and tour stadiums nationwide and across the world, did.
"It's been unbelievable," Sixx said of Mötley Crüe's latest stadium tour run. "I’m so grateful to be doing this, and it started, like, three years ago when the movie came out -- two and a half years ago. We kind of, we broke up the band. We just decided to quit touring. We’ve been doing it for, god, 35 years at that point."
"Forever, yeah," Lee added.
While they initially said no to the idea, Sixx said he was able to talk Lee into it.
"Tommy does other stuff, and I do other stuff, and I remember getting the phone call from management, and I was like. 'No,'" Sixx said of being asked to tour again. "And they go, 'You haven’t even heard what I have to say.'"
"We were done. We were done," Lee said.
"And we were friends, and we were fine and everything’s good," Sixx agreed. "We're just like, 'No, it’s a lot of work.' When you see the show out there, you're gonna go, 'Wow.' I mean, it's years of work putting it together, and then they were like, 'No, not eight arenas, eight stadiums,' and I was like, 'Let me call Tommy.'"
He continued, "I was like, 'Hey, dude, they’re talking about us touring,' and he's like, 'No.' Because we wanted to be -- stand by what we said, and then it was 16 and 36, which we just entered our 36th stadium, and there’s, what, another 120 next year and the year after that, so, we're grateful we said yes."
"We're having a blast," Sixx said. "How can you say no to stadiums?" Lee agreed.
They made the right choice too, with the loyal and new fans alike packing stadiums to see the group perform.
"Packed crazy," Sixx said, with Lee adding, "Every night is bananas."
Although Lee has been on a sort of social media probation ever since posting his NSFW selfie, the group and their wives have been sharing some BTS moments from their world tour.
"They’re having a blast," Sixx said of the group members' wives joining them on tour. "I mean, we're all having a blast, everyone's just having a good time...it's amazing to be 41 years together? I mean, sometimes it's just like, 'What?' Stepping into some sacred territory there."
It's all gratitude, with Lee noting that their group is one of the few with all original members who have been performing for four decades.
"It's some pretty crazy stuff, man," Lee said. "I just echo what Nikki says, gratitude is on stun. To be able to do this, and think about this, for a second, name a band who's got the same original members that's been doing it this long -- good luck."
As for Lee's other portrayals onscreen, while he's seen Pam & Tommy -- the Emmy-nominated Hulu series that tells the story behind his and Pamela Anderson's infamous sex tape -- he doesn't plan to release his own version.
"No, you know what, it’s been told," Lee said before giving Anderson props for telling her side in her own Netflix doc. "I mean, that’s a weird one, man, it’s a weird one to even answer, but I respect her for telling her version, because the version they told was somebody else's version, and it’s not exactly the way certain things were."
For more from the pair, check out The Retaliators, in theaters now.
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