The NBA as a cultural force has not been limited to the court, especially when it comes to television and movies. We’ve had Julius Erving in “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.” Kareem-Abdul Jabbar in “Airplane!” Alex English (with Jamie Lee Curtis and Gregory Peck!) in “Amazing Grace and Chuck.” And more recently: Ray Allen in “He Got Game,” Kevin Garnett in “Uncut Gems” and Juancho Hernangomez and Anthony Edwards in “Hustle.”
Over the course of his 20-year NBA career, LeBron James has also gotten into the act — and acting. In 2015, LeBron, who is usually the center of everything, took a supporting role in “Trainwreck,” starring Amy Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow. LeBron plays, well, LeBron James, basketball superstar, cheapskate and best friend of an orthopedic surgeon played by Bill Hader, star of HBO’s “Barry” and a “Saturday Night Live” alum.
Hader and Apatow talked to The Athletic about the experience of having LeBron in the movie, his improv skills and how he held his own against seasoned acting pros.
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This podcast excerpt has been edited for clarity and grammar.
Apatow: We knew that we wanted Bill Hader to play a doctor who had a very specific talent. So, we were thinking: “Oh, he’s the knee guy.” We had heard about these guys, like, “Oh, here’s the hip guy.” (Or) “Here’s the guy that does the Tommy John surgery.” So we thought that would be an interesting character: A sports medicine doctor and his best friend is an athlete. And I think when you write scripts, you tend to start at your dream. So if it was baseball, you might go, “All right, let’s get Babe Ruth.” So Amy put in “LeBron James.”
And you don’t think it’s going to happen. It rarely happens. It slowly clicks down and then you settle.
Hader: I remember going to see the Heat play, and Judd took me there because LeBron had hosted SNL (in 2007) and I was there, so LeBron recognized me.
We weren’t sitting courtside. We were sitting some rows back trying to be inconspicuous. And LeBron saw me and yelled out my name, and I think that made Judd really happy. But then it also kind of made me, like, the LeBron whisperer because I think Judd was nervous. So it was always like, “Bill, go talk to him.”
Apatow: Afterwards, me and Bill went to lunch the next day with him. And the thing I remember about it was (LeBron) just seemed so tired. That’s what I took from the whole experience. Because we’re at the hotel they were staying at, and as we were having lunch, one by one, the rest of his team would pop by, and they all looked annihilated. It was the moment when I realized how exhausting the game is because they clearly needed major recovery from the night before.
Over lunch, we started talking about the movie and what we were going for and how we thought it would be fun for LeBron to be what we said was like the Bruno Kirby in “When Harry Met Sally.” What if our Bruno Kirby – the funny, likable, best friend who really cares about all your problems – was LeBron James.
Hader: I heard Judd pitching him stuff like, “Oh, you guys go to a club together or something.” And then feeling LeBron not really being into that, and kind of listening. (LeBron) really responded to the idea of being cheap, that character would be cheap. He thought that was really funny.
Apatow: He doesn’t bring his wallet when he has lunch with Bill. He’s always letting Bill pick up the check. You know, your mega-rich friend who’s cheap. When he forgets his sunglasses in a scene, he’s really worried about what they cost to replace. That really made everybody laugh. And Amy wrote hilarious versions of all of that.
Hader: It was like being at “Saturday Night Live.” He has an incredibly good sense of humor. What always surprised me about LeBron was his willingness to go weird, and he’s more interested in something that’s a little more strange as opposed to playing off of his persona.
Apatow: It’s really a gamble. You just don’t know what you’re going to get. You have to believe that you will somehow cobble something together. And so you think, in my worst-case scenario, I still think this will be funny.
But LeBron was such a ridiculous best-case scenario. So our confidence came from working with people on other movies who really came through. Eminem was in “Funny People,” and was so fun to work with and an incredible improviser. That was one of the great days on the set for us.
Usually you can get something fun out of (non-actor celebrities). I like to watch them on talk shows, because usually that’s what it’s going to feel like. The way they talk when they’re on Jimmy Fallon or (Stephen) Colbert, that’s going to be the sense of humor you’re going to get. So, you’re imagining how they’ll do it and hopefully you’re correct.
Also, Bill just said, “Hey, when (LeBron) did SNL, he was hysterical and really fun to work with.” And that’s a big part of it.
Hader: You know, the whole thing on “Saturday Night Live” and with “Trainwreck” was: How do you help this person score laughs? How do you make them comfortable?
A lot of it is just trying to make something they feel like they can own and do well. Part of that is just figuring out their taste.
And LeBron’s taste was, he was genuinely funny in a very kind of … I’m from Oklahoma, so it did remind me of him being from Ohio. It made sense. Very Midwestern, his dry sense of humor … in that in-strange (way) and kind of coming from reality.
Like it really made me happy how much he loved the idea of being cheap. He just thought that was very funny as opposed to, like, something kind of broad.
Apatow: When they started doing the scene together at the restaurant where LeBron doesn’t bring his wallet.
(In) take one, he’s riffing with Bill. He’s so good in take one that I just started laughing, not because of the scene, but just laughing because I was so happy that it worked.
I thought, “Oh, I don’t know what he did, but he prepared.” He came in. He clearly worked with the coach. He clearly really thought about the scene. He probably tried to come up with some weird ideas for improvs and extra lines. And he did what you dream any actor would do: He came in loaded.
He must have been nervous on some level, because it’s not a familiar space for him. But you didn’t feel that at all.
Hader: Well, it’s this kind of improv thing they teach you at Second City is you just trying to make the other person look good. So asking questions, reacting to anything he gives you, like when he starts talking about – I don’t remember if it was in the movie – all the great things in Cleveland.
What you don’t want is “Yeah, yeah. OK, OK, whatever, whatever. And move on.” You want to react to those.
So he says, “Superman was made there,” and (you respond with) “What? So … Superman … so you, you grew up reading Superman?” You try to give him a thing that then he can come back with.
(The) Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: “How many times you gone there? What? What do you what do you, what do you do at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?” You try to put it back to them so then he can do something with it.
Judd’s doing that, Judd’s shouting out ideas, Amy was writing things. But to be honest, we didn’t have to do very much. I mean, (LeBron) was so good.
Apatow: I always thought it was funny to show people that when you know someone who’s famous, you don’t care that they’re famous. If they’re your friend and they do something that gets a lot of attention, at some point they’re just your friend. You’re not treating them like they’re this person who’s one of the greatest ever at what they do. They’re just your buddy who’s cool sometimes, not cool other times. And it’s just like any other relationship.
For instance, when they play basketball and they’re playing one-on-one, which is so funny that LeBron would even want to play one-on-one with Bill. But they’re friends, so what else are they going to do?
Hader: What he would improvise and stuff was like, what he would talk about with his friends. We would say different things at the top of the scene and I remember him improvising talking about Mr. T and “Rocky III.”
I also remember when we were shooting that scene, that Chris Rock was there and Chris Rock was pitching jokes. So, you’re going to have Chris Rock shout out the thing (about) how she’s going to want to go to a nail salon, you got to buy her a nail salon and … all that stuff. That was all Chris Rock.
Jokes being like, “Yeah, you and I lived in two different worlds, you know?”
Apatow: And the idea that as he does not let up on Bill, he does not go easy. He plays him as hard as he would play someone on his team at a gym. That Bill isn’t surprised by it. And Bill, isn’t … going, “Oh, my God, go easy on me.” They’ve done this a hundred times.
In addition to being humorous, it does feel real. If you’re buddies with Michael Jordan, every once in a while, all he’s probably going to want to play basketball with you because no one else is around. And he’s probably going to go all out because he always goes all out.
Hader: Just to get to play one-on one with him and and have him just completely annihilate me.
I will say, I shot something and he said, “You know, you got a nice shot.” And I’ve lived on that. He complimented my shot!
We were watching that Lakers-Denver (West finals) series and I was watching it with my 13-year-old. And I was like, “You know, LeBron complimented my shot once.”
And she’s like, “You’ve told me that like 10 times. Can you please stop?”
Apatow: It was so much fun, but it was fun because he was enjoying himself and was very, very professional and he cared.
Because some people come into situations like that and they’re like, “All right, let’s get this over with.”
I think he approached it in a very thoughtful, serious way. He wanted to be as good in the movie as he is on the court. Clearly. He wasn’t just doing it as a lark. He wanted to do very well, for whatever reasons.
I wasn’t thinking he is dreaming of another acting role, but he showed up. And because he was easy to talk to and a nice person and very open, then suddenly the whole thing gets much better and more creative because people aren’t nervous around him. He’s one of us.
Hader: There was that scene with Marv Albert.
I remember Marv Albert came out with his script once in the scene, and Judd was like, “Marv, you’re holding the script,” and LeBron and I lost it. We started laughing so hard.
I was doing off-camera (dialogue) for LeBron, and we just kept looking at each other and every time Marv Albert would speak, we would start laughing.
(Marv) was like when he was on Letterman or whatever, he has coffee in his hand and … he came out with his script. He was very nice. But once that happened, he put the script down – and Marv Albert was great — and he came out again, but just him holding the coffee and everything. (Laughs) It’s so funny.
Apatow: Bill is great. Bill’s an incredible actor and I think they both tuned into each other and found a rhythm literally immediately. Then we just thought, “Oh, OK, so the rest of this week is going to be so fun,” because he’s crushing it.
Then you’re just working with him as an actor. You’re not thinking about him as an athlete. You’re only thinking, “He’s playing this part: here’s what I need this part to do; here’s where the laughs need to go; here’s the reality level; here’s how funny, but also how real it needs to be; here’s the options we need,” because we always get tons of extra jokes and riffs and we play a lot. And he really enjoyed that.
He was just another great actor in our cast. Our cast was a murderer’s row of of funny people, and he was as funny as everybody else.
Then we would laugh at how upset we were that he’s, you know, one of the greatest basketball players of all time and also is (as) good at what we do as we are, (but) just on the side. I mean, we said it as a joke, but we meant it. It’s almost annoying that he’s that funny and could just step in and do it.
Hader: We had a (screening) of “Trainwreck” in Akron, and that was amazing. And just seeing him and his friends like he’s very, very tight (with) the people he grew up with. He keeps them very close. I was also very impressed, at least from what I saw, that there is no sort of hierarchy because he is LeBron.
There was a moment where they wanted to play music. They rented out this restaurant, this little restaurant in Akron for us to have this after party for the screening. And it was … just basically LeBron and his friends and me and Judd and (actor) Leslie Mann (and Apatow’s wife) and Amy, and we were all just kind of hanging out.
Then his wife said, “Why don’t you go, LeBron, go home and get the speakers.”
And he went, “Oh, OK, does anybody else need anything else?”
Then he came back with the speakers. He hooked up these speakers, and then they started playing music and everybody was dancing, but it was kind of almost like an eighth grade dance party, you know, everyone just kind of like, (being) awkward, you know.
But it was very sweet and genuine. Him being like, “Having a good time, man? Are you having a good time?”
I’m like, “Yeah, you’re the greatest basketball player of all time.” I don’t know (laughs) I don’t know what to say.
To this day … when he beat the scoring record, I’m looking and I go, “Oh, I have his number. I’m going to text him congratulations.”
And I texted him. He responded like in five minutes. “Thank you so much, man. Blah, blah, blah.”
And I was like, “Oh, my God.”
Then when they lost (Game 4 to Denver), I texted him — and he I thought he played amazing that last game, he played his heart out — and I just texted, and he’s like, “Oh, man, I gave it the best I could.”
But he’s just he’s incredibly thoughtful. I mean, I get that, you know, I saw some criticism. I feel like it was (Charles) Barkley or someone saying, “LeBron, he’s too nice. Like MJ and … Kobe were like killers. And LeBron’s nice.”
And I’m like, yeah, but he’s a very happy person.
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No Dunks: LeBron James, King of the Memes
Weinbach Q&A: The Redeem Team and LeBron’s “unicorn” entertainment career
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Getty; Rommel Remano, Andrew Toth)
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