Nixon suits up as dad in HBO series
Norm Nixon hasn’t lost any of the fire or swag that helped the basketball legend win two championships with the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s. For proof, just ask his son, DeVaughn.
“We’ll be watching basketball games, and he’ll be like, ‘DeVaughn, you know I was a beast on that court,’ ” Nixon, 38, said.
“I’m like, ‘All right man, I get it, you played for the NBA, and you’re better than me. That’s why I act.’ ”
DeVaughn Nixon has been working in Hollywood since he was a child, but he recently embarked on his greatest acting challenge yet: portraying his father in “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” now airing Sundays on HBO. The series is based on Jeff Pearlman’s 2014 book, “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s.”
Both the book and show highlight the many colorful characters who contributed to the Lakers winning five NBA championships from 1980 through 1988 — including “Stormin’ ” Norman Nixon.
“My biggest thing with doing this was to put the looking glass on him for a change,” son DeVaughn Nixon said. “He’s always been a very private person ... but I think he’s going to thoroughly enjoy it.”
Movies were always a huge part of Nixon’s life. His mother — actor, dancer and choreographer Debbie Allen — would regularly drop off him and his grandfather at a Los Angeles movie theater, and the two would spend the day theater-hopping until she picked them up later that evening.
He began his entertainment career as a model for a video game, which is where talent scouts first saw his face. Soon he was making movies. Nixon was only 5 years old when he acted in his first movie, 1990’s “To Sleep With Anger.” He went on to have small roles in classics like 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and 1992’s “The Bodyguard.”
Since then, most of Nixon’s work has been on the small screen. Before “Winning Time,” he appeared in “Runaways” on Hulu and “Snowfall” on FX.
Being Norm Nixon’s son did not mean DeVaughn automatically was selected to play his father. He had to audition and actually went up against his brother, Norm Jr., for the role. There was “a little inherent competition” going on between the brothers, but they agreed early on that this part should definitely go to one of them. There were no hard feelings when DeVaughn was ultimately cast as Norm Nixon.
Playing his father put DeVaughn Nixon in a unique position. He knew there wasn’t much he could offer to the creatives behind “Winning Time,” especially executive producer Adam McKay. But there were times when he felt compelled to say, “My dad wouldn’t do that.”
“I did my best to please (my dad) while also pleasing the writers and producers,” he said. “I had to marry those two, and that was the biggest challenge for me.”
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