Chris Hemsworth joined Ed Sheeran on stage for the singer’s Bucharest, Romania show on Saturday, August 24 — and surprised the crowd with an unexpected skill.
During Sheeran’s performance of “Thinking Out Loud,” the Thor star, 41, sat behind the drum kit and provided the beat for the song, as 70,000 fans roared in approval.
As it turns out, Hemsworth’s turn on the drums had a purpose beyond just delighting Sheeran’s audience: The segment was filmed for the upcoming second season of Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, the actor’s Disney+ docuseries in which he learns how to live life to the fullest with the help of experts.
“Got Chris Hemsworth to learn to play drums for my stadium show,” Sheeran, 33, noted in a video posted to Instagram following the concert, as Hemsworth stood nearby.
“Basically what’s happening is Chris emailed me last December saying he’s doing a documentary on cognitive health and the benefits of learning an instrument,” Sheeran added. “And he came to visit me, and he’s learned drums and he’s coming onstage in front of 70,000.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Hemsworth said, while making an air-drumming gesture. “It’ll be nice to put this one to bed.”
There’s no set release date yet for the second season of Limitless, which will feature Hemsworth’s drumming, but per The Hollywood Reporter, it’s expected sometime in 2025.
Hemsworth first discovered his genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s while filming the docuseries, which premiered in 2022. On the show, the actor was informed he has two copies of the APOE4 gene, which is linked to the disease. The revelation means Hemsworth is eight to 10 more times likely to develop Alzheimer’s — a disease his grandfather is currently suffering from.
“It’s like one in a thousand people [who have two copies of the gene] … or one in 10,000. I can’t remember,” he told Vanity Fair in 2022 of the predisposition news. “There was an intensity to navigating it. Most of us, we like to avoid speaking about death in the hope that we’ll somehow avoid it.”
“We all have this belief that we’ll figure it out,” he added. “Then to all of a sudden be told some big indicators are actually pointing to this as the route which is going to happen, the reality of it sinks in. Your own mortality.”
“For me, the positive of it was like, ‘Right, if I didn’t know this [Alzheimer’s] information, I wouldn’t have made the changes I made,’” Hemsworth noted. “I just wasn’t aware of any of it, so now I feel thankful that I have in my arsenal the sort of tools to best prepare myself and prevent things happening in that way.”
