Disabled actors show off skills in sports comedy ‘Champions’
The new comedy “Champions” stars Woody Harrelson and Kaitlin Olson, but the veteran actors have tough competition for the spotlight with some charismatic newcomers.
Harrelson plays a college basketball coach with a quick temper who’s facing jail time or community service for some bad behavior. To avoid punishment, he finds himself coaching a basketball team of young adults with intellectual disabilities who help him rediscover the joy of the game.
Harrelson’s agent and another producer wanted to remake “Campeones” — Spain’s biggest box-office hit in 2018 — and thought the actor and basketball fan would be a great fit. Harrelson loved the story and signed on as star and executive producer, and tapped his longtime friend Bobby Farrelly to direct.
Casting was challenging as the producers wanted the athletes played by disabled actors, who also needed basketball skills. They auditioned hundreds of people before finding the 10 standout personalities who make up the Friends basketball team.
Harrelson says he wasn’t sure what to expect on the first day of shooting. “Once I came in and met everybody and we started at it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be so much fun!’ And it really was,” he said in a recent interview. “They taught me that they can nail the lines, no problem. But also they just taught me, just the great fluidity of being who they are.”
The actors have different intellectual challenges, but many found their comedy chops on screen.
“Everybody brought something so unique and different to it,” Olson said. “And parts of their
actual personalities shone through, which is probably why they … got the role in the first place. There was a lot … of wonderful acting, but there’s also a lot of wonderful just being themselves, and it gave us an opportunity to just play off of that.”
Farrelly said he thinks audiences are more open to disabled actors on screen and seeing their stories. He recalled making the 2005 movie “The Ringer,” where Johnny Knoxville infiltrated the Special Olympics. Farrelly said nondisabled actors were cast in disabled roles back then.
“We would never do that nowadays, so the world has changed in that regard,” he said. “We played that a lot broader. It was … much more of a kind of a goofy comedy. This one here, it’s set in reality. These are all very real people.”
Some of the actors playing the Friends team members attended the film’s recent New York premiere. James Day
Keith, a Special Olympian for basketball, who plays Benny in the film, said he likes setting a positive example for other disabled actors. “I do see myself as a role model because seeing what I did will probably make them want to do it themselves because there’s no limit to success.”
Casey Metcalfe, who plays Marlon, said he hopes disabled actors have a place in Hollywood going forward. “The more people we have in this industry who are diverse, like myself ... not just racially diverse ... (but) neurodiverse. I think that’s exactly, you know, what the industry needs.”
Some of the actors, like Madison Tevlin, who plays the only woman on the team, said learning the basketball moves was harder than acting. “I’m really natural on camera when it comes to acting, but with basketball, I never played before … so the team helped me a lot.”
Olson called working with the Friends “really inspiring.”
“They showed up every single day, 100%. They’re ready to work, ready to do the best that they could, ready to take in all the information. And it was really beautiful,” she said. “You work with a lot of people sometimes who are just like, ‘This is just a job,’ and they’re getting it done. These guys were like, ‘We’re here. We’re ready to milk every single ounce out of it.’ ”