Besides shooting numerous brand commercials, professional athletes also tend to make cameos in movies. While most of them do not have a background in theater, that wasn’t the case with All-Star guard, Kyrie Irving. Having a drama background helped Irving give a flawless performance and led to Uncle Drew’s success.
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Back in 2015, Kyrie Irving sat down with GQ Sports to talk about his on-court success and the off-the-court journey that led to it. During the interview, Irving revealed his participation in his high school musical and the almost disastrous performance that followed.
Irving’s first time up the stage was during his senior year in high school. Dealing with stage fright, it turned out to be a difficult task for Kyrie to turn into another character on stage in front of the crowd.
As he went on to recall further, his performance wasn’t too nerve-racking either leading to an awful on-stage debut. Eventually, Irving worked on being around people and being himself in front of the camera, which in turn helped him over time. One big factor that helped Irving was his ability to take directions to play the role of the given character to perfection.
“Well, it all started when I put myself out there in my first high school play my senior year. I was so nervous to get up in front of people and turn into another character, so I was actually pretty awful in the high school musical. Just pretty terrible.”
“But then I started to get used to being in front of people and being in front of the camera and then I was able to be myself. Once I started to understand how to take direction, I was able to actually play a different character, like Uncle Drew.”
From having stage fright and some theater background, Kyrie Irving was able to bring one of the best fictional basketball characters to life. He did a great job when Uncle Drew came out. Having numerous NBA legends and Hall of Famers in the movie and still being able to outshine every one of them attests to the success of Uncle Drew and also Irving’s skills as an actor across the country and the globe.
Kyrie Irving’s iconic Uncle Drew character
Back in 2018, Uncle Drew made its debut in the theaters and was bound to be successful, at least among basketball fans. Kyrie Irving mentioned how the movie was a homage to the older generations who played the game before them.
“It’s just a unique opportunity that I’ve taken full advantage of to add ‘actor’ to my resume and with the hope that it has great reception. It’s an incredible family movie with an incredible story, and I’m looking forward to everyone seeing it. I’ve always believed in paying homage to the older generations.”
While shooting for the movie, Kyrie did an amazing job playing an old head with amazing ball-handling skills. To play the role to absolute perfection, Irving had even taken inspiration from the Uncle Drew character to channel his old soul into it.
Now this may be an unpopular opinion but with the type of movie and the amount of success Uncle Drew had across the nation, the movie does deserve a sequel.
