John C. Reilly has nothing to prove. Every time he appears to be carving out a niche he’s diverted from it, whether that’s broad comedies, independent films, hard-hitting awards nominees or blockbusters. He’s more than shown that he’s an actor of exceptional versatility, range and taste in projects.
Yet he is continuing to shake things up, appearing in what he calls “my first big show” for TV, having largely starred in films and on stage. The show is Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, a look at the Los Angeles basketball team’s famous 1980s ‘Showtime’ era, in which they were led by star players Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Reilly stars as Jerry Buss, the chemist, businessman and playboy who bought the team in 1979 and led them through their this era, in which they won five NBA championships and brought a sense of showmanship to the game.
So why this move, and this character now?
Well one thing that comes up a lot in our chat is ambition, and the potential to be underestimated. “I came up with this line, which is that the road behind me is strewn with those who underestimated me,” Reilly says on our Zoom chat. “When people disrespect you, or underestimate you, some people it deflates. But in me, it makes me rise to the challenge and want to do everything I can to prove them wrong. And Jerry was very much like that, that was the secret to his success – positivity, the power of positive thinking.”
For Reilly, this role is personal. He sees a lot of himself in the character, relating to Jerry’s ability to keep his cool while those around him think he’s out of his depth. In one particular scene in episode 2, rival team owner Arnold ‘Red’ Auerbach dresses Jerry down, telling him not to worry about winning and to stay in his lane.
Reilly explains that “I come from a very working class neighbourhood on the south side of Chicago, and here I am in Hollywood making all these movies, and I’ve become this well-known person. But inside my heart I’m still that kid from the south side of Chicago. And Jerry was still that kid from from rural Wyoming.
“So when a situation comes up like that, when Red Auerbach underestimates Jerry and says, ‘Oh you’re just a party boy, enjoy it, don’t worry about it’, it reminds me of when people underestimated me coming up.”
Reilly first came on to the acting scene in 1989, with a role in Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War. He went on to work with directors including Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, be nominated for an Oscar and three acting Golden Globes, and star with Will Ferrell in two of the biggest comedies of the noughties. His Step Brothers and Talladega Nights director, Adam McKay, is also an executive producer on Winning Time, and directed the first episode.
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Reilly was cast in the role of Jerry only about a week before shooting, after things didn’t work out with Michael Shannon who had originally been cast. This left him with little prep time.
“I had to just go with my instincts, but I knew with Adam McKay that I’d be in good hands, and I knew that improvisation and going with your gut would be the perfect thing to do with Adam. And once I saw my hairstyle (that’s my own hair by the way, it’s a real combover, it’s not a wig) and once I grew the moustache, I thought, okay, I look like him now. Now what does it mean? What does it feel like to be him?”
Reilly soon found that might not be such an easy question to answer. Where he has previously played real life figures – Noah Dietrich in The Aviator and Oliver Hardy in Stan and Ollie – there had been a wealth of background material. Dietrich wrote an autobiography and Hardy appeared in hundreds of films. Yet while Jerry burst on to the basketball scene with a lot of swagger, Reilly believes he saw press as “a means to an end”, meaning once he had achieved that end he became quite private.
“He would give like one interview at the beginning of the season to a local reporter to talk about the state of the team and then that was it,” says Reilly. “You might see him photographed going into a club or sitting at the game, but he was he became more and more mysterious.
“So I had to talk to people that knew him. I had to really just kind of read the tea leaves.”
Reilly clearly has a lot of respect for Jerry, who he remembers was “like the king of LA” when he was growing up. He was unaware of the details of the story being told in Winning Time before taking on the role, and thinks even those who know a lot about the era will be shocked.
“Just in order to break even he had to get into the play-offs and win the championship. Jerry is one of the most exhausting characters I’ve ever played because the tension of that season just ratchets up and ratchets up. By the time I finished that job I collapsed with exhaustion.
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“It’s insane what he pulled off and I have to say, as an American, it’s a really inspiring American story of coming up from the bottom and making it to the top, you know. It’s a classic sort of rags to riches tale. To pass him off as like, a friend of Hugh Hefner really belittles the amazing accomplishments of his life.
“He grew up in the depression in Wyoming with a single mother. And then, really through education turned himself into a success. I mean, how many sports team owners do you know that have a PHD? He had a PHD in physical chemistry. Like, I got kicked out of chemistry class in high school, I was failing so badly they put me in another class.”
Winning Time has a unique visual style, and in order to create this it was shot with a 35 millimetre camera, a state-of-the-art digital camera, and an Ikegami camera from the 80s. Reilly explained this is because a lot of the story took place on TV, and it allowed the editors to seamlessly go between the drama and archive footage.
This style was crafted by McKay in the first episode, and after a long break in filming due to the pandemic, they needed someone with similar sensibilities to come in for episode 2. Enter Reilly’s friend and co-star in 2010 independent film Cyrus, Jonah Hill.
“I advocated for Jonah to do it,” Reilly explains. “I had seen him a long time before we started shooting that episode and he was like, ‘dude I’m so excited about the Lakers thing! I grew up here!’ Everyone that grew up in LA is just on fire about this show. You know, it’s their childhood, they’re reliving all these huge moments. And I immediately thought, because he had just directed a movie, he should come in.
“I knew that Jonah would bring a lot of fun energy and he loves to improvise like I do. And it was someone that I knew. Going from Adam McKay, I didn’t want to just walk into some stranger. I thought, let’s keep this energy that we’d created in the pilot going.”
That energy is clearly felt on screen. The series is playful, with more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a stick at, and clearly made with love for these characters and their unbelievable success story. I was unsurprised with Reilly called him “one of the funnest characters I’ve ever played”.
He explained that this was because “he was so driven, I’m still kind of stunned at what he did. And I think by the end of it, I hope anyway, that Jerry’s family will feel like we honoured him, because I feel that it was a huge honour to get to play the guy.”
Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty airs on Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW on 28th March.
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