Mark Wahlberg, star of ‘Father Stu,’ on playing boxer-turned-priest, ‘The Fighter 2,’ potential Brady movie

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mark Wahlberg is friendly with Tom Brady. Besides hailing from Boston, where Brady and the Patriots owned the NFL for the better part of two decades, the Academy Award-nominated actor is arguably just as famous for his diet and fitness regimen. But Wahlberg’s latest role, for Sony Pictures’ upcoming Easter Week drama Father Stu, required preparation that even Brady might’ve balked at.

A true story based on the life of Stuart Long, a boxer-turned-priest who later battled a muscular disease, Father Stu is something of a passion project for Wahlberg, a devout Catholic. (He’s been aiming to bring it to the big screen since local priests told him Stuart’s story over dinner more than five years ago.) That passion helped him put on 30 pounds to accurately portray Stu, all in a matter of weeks. First it took 7,000 calories a day. Then 11,000 daily for the four-week home stretch of filming.

“I would love to sit here and say — you know, chocolate chip cookies are my favorite — so I’d love to say that I had some chocolate chip cookies and wine at the end of the day,” Wahlberg said in an exclusive interview this week, “but I had to eat and consume so many calories, and tried to do it in a healthy way, that by the time it came to having a little cheat meal, you didn’t wanna do anything other than just lay down. I mean, it felt so bad. But the journey — the spiritual journey, the physical journey — were such critical parts to the story.”

Catch Cody Benjamin’s full interview with Mark Wahlberg right here:

Ballooning his weight wasn’t the only goal. Getting fit was also key for Wahlberg’s scenes as a boxer. Fortunately, he has experience playing an athlete, starring as bartender-turned-Eagles player Vince Papale in Invincible (2006) and former pro boxer “Irish” Micky Ward in the Oscar-winning The Fighter (2010).

“I still approach every movie that I do as an…