Matt Damon said Jon Bernthal inspired the rest of the cast with a grueling scene early in production.

Damon recalled that Bernthal was half submerged in freezing water in Morocco during the winter while filming a scene inside the Trojan Horse.

“Jon was shaking, putting his hands together and pressing down to get the chills off so he could start a line of dialogue,” Damon told People in an interview published last Thursday.

Christopher Nolan repeatedly checked on Bernthal, but the actor simply urged him to continue filming. “John was like, ‘Just leave, just leave,'” Damon recalled.

“That set the tone for the cast. The message was that at some point you’re going to be the guy in the water and you’re not going to complain about it. You’re going to try as hard as you can,” Damon said.

In a separate July interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Damon said Bernthal was the “first example of someone surpassing what they thought they could do.”

“No one on that horse was going to complain for the next five months about anything we saw,” Damon said.