— Jonathan Coachman and Survivor alumnus/wrestling personality Jonny Fairplay are set to discuss wrestling and Survivor on Coachman’s “Coach and Company” radio show at 5:45 PM EST. You can listen here.
— David Otunga recently spoke with Arda Ocal about his role in The Call and more. Check out the highlights:
On how he got involved with The Call: “I auditioned for the director Brad Anderson. I went and read some scenes for him and luckily he liked what I did. So he cast me in the film. I went up for the role against other actors. Luckily I made it; I was against people who have been in the business a very long time.”
On his acting background: “Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to be an actor since I was a kid, even before WWE. I’ve been taking acting classes for years, through high school and college and even up until WWE; I still make time to go back to acting class at least once a week…it’s been a goal of mine since I was a kid so it’s something I’ve been working towards.”
On what was going through his mind when he got the role: “That this is finally it, this is what I’ve dreamed about, this is what I’ve worked hard for all my life and I finally got this opportunity and it couldn’t of been any better. To share the screen with an Academy Award winner for my first role, how many people can say that they did that?”
On his role in the film: “A little girl gets kidnapped and Halle Berry plays the 911 operator who fields the call. I play a police officer, Officer Jake Devans who works with Halle to try and find the little girl. Officer Devans is a good guy, a young gun. He takes his job serious but sometimes a little to serious, so he’s a little over zealous because his heart is in the right place and he just wants to do the right thing.”
On playing the good guy: “(Laughs) It was a bit different for me. It was fun, I really enjoy being a good guy, and I consider myself a good guy in real life anyways so it was good.”
On how long he was on set: “We shot for a little under two months. The days were great, you get there and they just call you in when you have to do a scene so you get a lot of down time. But you’re in a trailer for a long time, your scenes are laid out for you so you know your lines already, which is a new thing going in for me. In WWE we’re sometimes handed something at the last minute, like ‘here you go to pages’ or ‘oh we’re changing our minds,’ so with this we had the scenes for months. I was comfortable so when it was time to do our scenes they would come and take you to set, we’d knock it out and when you were done you got to go home. It’s easy.”
On Halle Berry: “She is really funny and really down to earth, I think that surprises a lot of people. She is really cool I can’t say enough good things about her.”
On working out the film with his WWE schedule: “I took a break from the road so I could just focus on acting. I wanted to completely be in character and that was something that really meant a lot to me. I really wanted to portray the character well and not look like I was acting but like I actually was that character. I did a lot of things in my downtime, I went on a ride along with police officers in Los Angeles, which was amazing, and I got to see what their daily life is like. I have so much respect for them it was unbelievable. I watched a whole bunch of cop films and TV shows and I asked the police officers which ones they thought were great. They told me ‘Southland’ was great and it was a really good one, so I started watching that and I love that show now and in certain scenes he’s pretty spot on. I went to one of the diners that the police officers go to a lot and I went to one of the barbers where they get their hair cut, I was just trying to be a police officer.”
On how his law degree was received among the locker room when he first joined the company: “Truthfully, I don’t think people believed it. I think most people thought it was just a gimmick or a character I was playing. From the fans the WWE Universe to the guys in the locker room. I heard even just recently, I did a gig on HLN as a guest legal expert and I heard so many times, “Wow I didn’t know you really are a lawyer, that’s true?” I would say, ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ I think it’s just so out of the ordinary so people just assumed it was a character.”
On Vince McMahon saying he hates lawyers: “That’s interesting; he’s never been anything but nice and very respectful to me. I actually get along with him great; maybe he doesn’t know I’m a lawyer!”
