Gavin Casalegno Spent 14 Hours a Day in Water Filming ‘The Devil’s Mouth’ — and He Loved Every Second of It

Gavin Casalegno and his Devil’s Mouth co-stars all went through the same physically grueling filming experience — but not everyone came out of the water with the same attitude about it.

Speaking with PEOPLE at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on July 28, the 26-year-old actor — known to audiences from The Summer I Turned Pretty — described spending upwards of 14 hours a day in and around water during production on the Prime Video survival thriller as something close to a dream assignment. The film, directed by Jeff Wadlow, follows a group of friends vacationing in Thailand who become trapped in an underwater cave with an aggressive bull shark.

A Water Puppy in His Natural Habitat

Casalegno was refreshingly upfront about why the production’s most exhausting physical demand didn’t bother him the way it did others. He described himself as someone who is naturally drawn to the water in his personal life — surfing, swimming, boogie boarding, anything that gets him in the ocean. The idea that a film role would require him to be submerged for the majority of every working day wasn’t a challenge to manage. It was, in his own words, paradise.

He acknowledged with obvious amusement that many of his co-stars did not share that sentiment. Lana Condor, who stars alongside him and Kathryn Newton, Nico Hiraga, Tommie Rose, and Tayme Thapthimthong, told PEOPLE separately that the water filming was relentlessly intense — physically and emotionally exhausting in ways that felt very real even outside the fiction of the story. By the end of each day, she said, she was sprinting straight for the towels.

A Man Who Lives for Danger

Casalegno also offered some broader context for why he wasn’t fazed by the production’s more extreme demands — sharing a philosophy about his own approach to life that makes the Devil’s Mouth shoot sound relatively tame by comparison.

He described a rock-climbing incident in Oklahoma where he went up far higher than intended without a rope, slipped, and found himself facing what felt like a 50-foot drop before managing to survive the situation. He was candid about the fact that his appetite for risk has accumulated both medical bills and trauma over the years — but he delivered the admission with the kind of cheerful acceptance that suggests neither has slowed him down particularly.

The Devil’s Mouth is now streaming on Prime Video.