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The first time you hear Anthony Ippolito’s voice in the trailer for “I Play Rocky,” you can’t help but gasp. The unmistakable Sylvester Stallone drawl is there, but something harder to convey than an impression is,
too: the hunger of a young man Hollywood didn’t believe in yet.
Ippolito knows that feeling better than most.
When he learned that Peter Farrelly was making a film about an unknown Stallone who willed his screenplay “Rocky” into existence, he also heard that bigger names were circling the part. Some people told him not to bother. Instead, he hung a heavy bag from a wooden beam in his grandmother’s basement, a room he says is “very much stuck in the ’70s,” pulled on vintage boxing gloves and shot an audition tape with no script and no invitation.
“I was like, ‘I gotta try something,’” he says.
On this episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Ippolito discusses landing the leading role in the making of a legend, getting his start in the business, and his thoughts on a changing Hollywood.
Listen below!
It’s a fitting origin story for a film about a man who turned down life-changing money rather than let anyone else play the character he wrote. The Amazon MGM Studios release, written by Peter Gamble and directed by Farrelly, finished as first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In a sense, Ippolito has been preparing since he was 3, when neighbors noticed he was “oddly good at baseball.” The novelty landed him on the local news and the TV series “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,” and a commercial agent suggested his mother start a college fund. Later credits include the Adam Sandler film “Pixels,” the Netflix drama series “Grand Army” and the Paramount+ limited series “The Offer,” in which he played Al Pacino.
His work on Stallone bordered on obsession. He listened to every scrap of footage he could find, including “Rebel,” an early Stallone film he ordered from a Japanese website and waited two months to receive. He studied the handwritten first draft of “Rocky,” scrawled in a red Mead notebook. He spent nearly two years bulking up from about 150 pounds to roughly 180 while training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. Yes, he drank the raw eggs. Once.
What stays with me is how Ippolito reads this moment. With AI-generated performers entering the conversation, he argues that actors “have to be humanists” and that the image of a young writer drafting his future longhand with a Bic pen has never felt more urgent. He wants raw, character-driven films in the vein of John Cassavetes.
Hollywood should take note. The next Stallone may not look like a movie star yet. He may be in his grandmother’s basement.
This interview has edited and condensed for clarity.
Before acting, you were a lefty center fielder and pitcher who wanted to make the Yankees. How did baseball turn into acting?
That was the initial goal: to try to make it as a baseball player. That’s how I got into acting, though. When I was 3 years old, I was oddly good at baseball. I was playing outside with my dad, and my neighbors saw and were like, “This is weird. You’re too good at this for a young kid.” I was on the local news first, then “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,” “Regis and Kelly,” all that stuff. I was 3, so that took me in a completely different direction. A commercial agent talked to my mom and said, “Hey, build a college fund for your kid and that was the entry point.
I have a friend who is a producer at ABC, and he sent me a photo of you as a kid with a bowl cut, in a Boy Scout uniform, on John Quiñones’ hidden-camera series “What Would You Do?” How did you get wrapped up in that? [Shows Ippolito the picture.]
That was Amarillo, Texas. I was really young when I got my first one of those. If the producers liked you, they kept including you. It’s a difficult environment because you have an earpiece in and real people around, so you have to toe the line. If you can do it, and they identify that, they’ll keep putting you in. A couple of people have made it out. One of the guys from “Stranger Things” was in one, and my friend David Iacono was in one with me. We met when we were like 15.
A few versions of how you landed this role are floating around. What’s the real story?
The kitchen sink. That’s the answer. Everything you hear is hard to communicate concisely. It was a bit of a messy process. I saw this was happening and thought, “OK, how do I get in the conversation for this?” I heard other names were floating around, bigger celebrity names and that was a little discouraging. I was hearing from some people, “Maybe it’s not even worth it. If it gets dropped in front of you, then you know.” But I was like, “No, I gotta try something.”
So without a script, I took that opportunity to shoot this thing in my grandma’s basement, which is very much stuck in the ’70s. I got the look, got a heavy bag, did some construction, hung it from a wooden beam and grabbed some vintage boxing gloves that matched the vibe. I always thought one of the most interesting parts of Rocky was his movement, his body rhythm, especially when he’s fighting. It’s almost an extension of his normal rhythm. So I felt that if I could capture that and show them I was interested, that might help. That’s how I got the script.
By the way, nobody’s asking for an audition scene at this point. They’re just like, “Here’s the script.” But I was like, “OK, I’m gonna audition for this.” I picked the scenes I thought were best, put an audition together, threw it at them, threw a couple more things at them and eventually I heard it was looking good.
Do you remember the first time you saw “Rocky?”
It’s hard to put my finger on the first time. I remember seeing “Rocky Balboa” in the movie theater when I was maybe eight years old. I was sitting real close to the screen. The first one, I couldn’t tell you. It was probably a year or two before that.
Stallone’s signature drawl comes from partial facial paralysis caused by a forceps accident at birth. How did you capture that without tipping into a generic impression?
It was a lot of listening first. I listened to him over and over again, almost obsessively. Everything I could find: “Rocky” interviews, but also other parts he played, because he was an unknown actor at the time. He had only done small parts, but he had a lot of great stuff. There’s this movie he did called “Rebel” that I ordered from a Japanese website, and it took two months to get to my place. Then he did “The Lords of Flatbush,” “Police Story,” “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “Capone,” but we’re talking two or three scenes. So you’re taking these little pieces and saying, “What is he doing here? What is he doing over here?”
He’s playing characters, but as an actor he’s also trying to tell the truth, right? He’s being truthful in his work. So you take everything you can and ask, “Who’s the guy here?” Hearing it from as many different directions as possible was very helpful. Then you have the burden of finding it within yourself in a way that feels honest and not forced or heavy-handed.
You spoke with Stallone before filming. What did he give you that you couldn’t have gotten from a tape?
Just his firsthand experience of being in those rooms with those producers, and what that dynamic is like. Everything going on in the background of his life in the context of those negotiations, and the toll that takes through this middle period of trying to stick to your guns. Hearing him recount that was really a privilege, because it’s something I’d been thinking about so much for over a year before talking to him.
Has he seen the finished film?
He did see the movie, and he had a very positive reaction. Thankfully, I got to speak to him. If you’re doing a biopic about, say, a musician or a political figure, the idea of them watching your acting from a technical perspective is a little different. But this is what he does. He’s an actor, so he’s watching me do what he does. I was just nervous in general, because seeing a cinematic telling of the inflection point in your life is probably a wild experience in and of itself. So I was hoping he’d have a positive reaction, and he did. He told me he really loved the film, and he’s really excited for more people to see it.
Stallone famously wrote the “Rocky” script in three and a half days. Did you read that original draft?
Absolutely. There’s some really cool stuff in there. There are a lot of KFC buckets in the original. Some of that made it into the movie, in the background of Rocky’s apartment. What was really cool is that he wrote it longhand. You can find the red Mead notebook he wrote in, and for the dialogue, it’s “R,” underlined and then Rocky’s lines and “P,” underlined, for Paulie. You can see his handwriting. You can see he’s blazing through this, crossing stuff out. It’s very raw.
And I think it’s important to point this out: It was a first draft. It’s nuts to say that the polished, finished, beautiful art that “Rocky” is was made in three and a half days total. Things were thrown around. Mickey had a different kind of personality. Things came together over time, but a lot of it was there in the beginning.
Let’s talk about the physical transformation. Did you actually drink the raw eggs?
I actually did it once, while I was training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. I had a hotel that didn’t have a microwave or anything, and I was having to get in crazy macros every day, a lot of protein. I was jerry-rigging it for a while, and then I was like, “All right, this is a good excuse, a good reason to do it.” I learned from that for sure.
It was a really large undertaking and took a very long time. Your body doesn’t really want to change, or at least mine didn’t in the beginning. When I played Pacino, I intentionally didn’t change my body very much. I was about the same size as him. But Pete told me he wanted that look, and I agreed. I think it was important to get that silhouette. It’s integral to the character and to Stallone himself. There’s something very interesting about the juxtaposition of his muscular, stocky physique and the fact that he’s trying to sell his intellectual property. That’s part of what made Stallone so interesting to me. So I had to gain a considerable amount of weight, which required an entire lifestyle shift.
How long did it take, and how much weight did you put on?
Almost two years. I started somewhere around 145 or 150, and I read that Stallone was about 180 in the movie, so I got up to that.
Peter Farrelly won best picture for “Green Book.” What surprised you about working with him?
Honestly, I was pretty surprised by how much room and freedom he gave me to play, to find things and explore moments. He’s such a veteran that a lot of the time I’m just trusting him, and that was a huge luxury for me. For him to take this chance on me in the first place is amazing and incredible. But to give me the room to take certain risks and bring in ideas on top of that is a whole other thing. He also has that incredible comedic sensibility, so there will be moments that aren’t in the script and if he sees something pop up through the blocking or whatever, he’ll hop all over it.
What was it like watching the film for the first time at TIFF, with your family and a full audience?
It was the most surreal thing ever. It really hit me during the introduction. Pete went up and spoke, and then there were maybe 15 minutes where they were showing the intro stuff and those 15 minutes felt like an hour. I was like, “Oh man, people are gonna get restless.” I was going a little nutty in my seat, to be honest with you. But hearing the audience respond throughout the movie the way they did exceeded anything I could have expected.
What if the room had gone the other way?
Every room’s different. You never know. People could collectively have been in a bad mood that day for some reason. It’s never a be-all-and-end-all, but it would have been discouraging, for sure.
Stallone earned Oscar nominations for best actor and original screenplay as a total unknown. What does it mean for your name to be in that conversation 50 years later?
It’s really overwhelming. This whole experience has been that way. But I think the great thing about this movie, and the way movies are going right now, is that we’re having a great year and these awards shows can serve to promote every film and celebrate the work all these fantastic artists have done over the last year. So to just be in that conversation and to help get more people excited about the movie is really all you could ask for.
You’ve now played the young version of Adam Sandler’s character in “Pixels,” Al Pacino in “The Offer” and now Stallone. Are you worried about becoming the guy Hollywood calls to play legends?
I’m not somebody who does impressions at all. I also did a show called “Grand Army” on Netflix, where I played a fictional character, which was great. And in some ways, even approaching these projects, you have to take those same liberties and approach it as a fictional character. There’s a respect and responsibility that comes with the fact that they are real people, and there are certain things you want to include. But at the same time, we’re doing an interpretation of a story. We’re condensing this incredible period of this guy’s life into a two-hour film, so we’re taking certain leaps anyway. There’s some freedom there as well.
So are you done playing Italian American actors for a while?
I feel like I’ve been spoiled. I don’t know who else would be in that conversation. But I think it would be nice to eventually play somebody who doesn’t have so many pieces of footage of them in the public eye. Just be a little different.
This awards season has a striking number of films that are love letters to acting itself, and I think it’s hard not to draw a line to AI and the creation of Tilly Norwood. Why do you think Hollywood is telling so many stories about actors right now?
I think actors on some level have to be humanists. What’s interesting about the Stallone story in the context of “I Play Rocky” is that he wrote the script longhand with a Bic pen in a red Mead notebook. There’s something intimate and tangible about that process, especially when you juxtapose it with the life we’re in now, with all these forms of tech and things writing for you, things thinking for you. I think we really need more stories about people doing things themselves, thinking for themselves and taking agency over their lives, especially the younger generation coming up.
What’s your read on the current state of Hollywood? Fix it for us.
I don’t know if I can fix it. And not that it needs to be completely fixed. There are a lot of good things happening. A lot of smaller-budget movies are getting a little more exposure, and there are more opportunities for that. Maybe the internet allows for that. But I do think more small- to midbudget movies should be funded. They have the problem of getting exposure, reaching audiences, marketing, because I think those are a lot of the best films. I’m a big fan of John Cassavetes, and I think we need more movies on that kind of scale, that are raw and human.
Sometimes if they throw too much money at something, a $100 million or $200 million movie, there’s a gloss over the whole thing. Especially now, younger kids are so immersed in social media and people are trying to fabricate themselves or polish and airbrush their lives and appearances. I really think there’s more of a need for raw, human stories than ever before. So hopefully that makes a resurgence.
Do you think a younger audience that has never seen “Rocky” can still access this film?
I think this film stands on its own in a lot of ways. It’s a somewhat separate story. It’s kind of an origin story, the inception of the character and it’s about a struggling writer, a struggling creative person trying to make a living doing it. That’s its own standalone piece. But at the same time, hopefully it acts as a bridge to “Rocky” for people who haven’t seen it and makes them curious about the original film and maybe even the rest of the franchise, because I think it’s a really, really important character in cinema history.
Assuming “I Play Rocky” goes great and the meetings start happening, what’s the project you want?
Something that feels not necessarily small, but intimate and character-driven. The bigger stuff, the explosions and the CGI monsters, it’s cool. I’m not saying those things are bad. I liked “Power Rangers” growing up. But more human, character-driven storytelling. That’s the game plan.
Any director you’d drop everything for?
I met Wim Wenders in Zurich, and it was maybe the coolest experience I’ve ever had. I saw “Perfect Days.”
10 QUESTIONS WITH ANTHONY IPPOLITO:
Childhood nickname?
“Ant,” honestly. They just cut it in half.
Favorite Yankee of all time?
A dark-horse choice of mine is Roger Maris. “61*” is what really put me on to him.
Something you loved as a kid that you can’t believe you were into?
I was modifying Nerf guns when I was a little kid. I’d break into them and spray WD-40 on the cylinders. It was pretty dangerous. We had to wear glasses.
Go-to karaoke or shower song?
This is gonna expose the Italian in me, but Sinatra. Most Sinatra.
Give me an alternate title for “I Play Rocky.”
You could just call the movie “Stallone,” I guess.
Your secret talent?
I like to paint. I draw, too. Drawing’s a bit more practical, like on a plane.
Favorite ice cream flavor?
Van Leeuwen. Black cherry chip, and then vanilla honeycomb.
The one item you couldn’t live without?
A pen.
What film or TV show in history do you wish you’d been a cast member of?
“Wings of Desire.”
Fictional character you most relate to or admire?
Quint in “Jaws.” I don’t know if I relate to him at all, but I admire that character. There’s something about Robert Shaw in that part.
Favorite piece of advice you’ve given or received?
It’s from “The Four Agreements”: Be impeccable with your word. And I think that also relates to yourself. When you say you’re going to do something, you’re making little agreements with yourself. If you follow through on it and don’t give up on yourself or abandon your plan for yourself, it’s ultimately good for you.
