FORT WORTH, Texas — There’s a charming photo of James “Jimmy” Stewart taken decades ago in 1953. The Oscar-winner, donning a suit and fedora, bends down at what is known today as the Fort Worth Zoo to feed a baby rhinoceros, named after another Hollywood legend, Marilyn Monroe.
More than more than 73 years later, “Jimmy” star KJ Apa, puts a red apple into the mouth of a black rhinoceros named Muke, on the morning of the film’s world premiere on Nov. 4, 2026. After grazing the animal’s inch-thick skin, he charms her with a kiss to her top lip.
Muke, who goes in for more smooches, is clearly sold on Apa. She’s obviously not at all comparing the 29-year-old New Zealander to Stewart, deemed by the American Film Institute as the third greatest American screen
actor and star of the beloved Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The ending of the 1946 feature directed by Frank Capra gets Apa every time he watches it. He chokes up when everyone gathers at the home of George Bailey (Stewart), once he’s realized all there is to live for.
“It's just all of that connection,” Apa tells USA TODAY, “and it makes me cry, that movie every time in that moment.”
So the stakes of playing such a role are not lost on Apa, but he didn’t let his fears gnaw at him for long.
“I mean, could you imagine if [the portrayal] was just terrible?” he says with a smile. “It was a thought, but not a memorable thought… I didn't really allow myself [to dwell on it]. I was too busy, honestly, trying to do the thing.”
“Jimmy” (in theaters now) chronicles Stewart’s time fighting in World War II and subsequent reckoning with the impact of what he’d witnessed as he resumed life as an actor and filmed “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Stewart joined the Army Air Corps in 1941, the same year he earned a best actor Oscar for “The Philadelphia Story,” driven by an unshakable desire to serve his country. He returned stateside in 1945 a changed man, after completing 20 combat missions.
Stewart documented his feelings during the war in a journal, later discovered by his daughter, Judy Stewart-Merrill, her twin sister Kelly Stewart-Harcourt tells USA TODAY.
“That diary expresses fears and doubts. It was a side of dad we hadn't seen before,” says Stewart-Harcourt, an executive producer on “Jimmy.” “We knew he was proud of his military service. It was the thing that he was most proud of. But then you read his diary, and you realize it was terrifying. And I find it so hard to imagine the dad I knew doing that.”
Director Aaron Burns estimates he began with a list of 50 actors who could potentially play the titular role, but Apa immediately stood out. "When we found KJ, within five minutes I knew we had our guy," Burns says, "and then from there, he put in the work to earn it."
Losing weight was the most challenging for Apa, "because I was just really angry the whole time," he says with a chuckle. In order to visually elongate his 5’11 frame to closer match the 6’3 Stewart, Apa says he shed "a significant amount of weight," approximately 15-20 pounds through dieting.
Stewart was also struggling with PTSD during this period of his life, Burns notes. "He couldn't hold food down, so he was very, very shockingly thin."
To further match Stewart's physical appearance, Apa wore contacts that colored his brown eyes blue − though he admits he was "nervous" about wearing them.
"Sometimes you can look a little like you're an alien or something,” Apa explains, "[but] the contacts were good. And the hair, we went through a few different phases of his different hairstyles that he had."
Apa also had to master the Pennsylvania-native’s distinctive voice, which he perfected with the help of dialect coach Eliza Simpson. "I listened to his voice over and over again and tried to remind myself that I'm not trying to recreate anything," Apa says. "It's my interpretation of my view of his performances and how I perceive his essence as a man.”
As part of the process, Apa and Simpson would pick one of Stewart’s dozens of films to view and reconvene the next day to discuss their favorite moments.
“We'll look at those scenes and scrutinize them, basically word for word,” he explains. “And if there's certain sentences that pop out that we both connect with, we'll look at what words there's emphasis on, why there's emphasis on those words. Usually, by a week's worth of work, you can figure out how someone communicates by what words they emphasize, which is really interesting."
"For me, the work outside of that was just listening over and over again and repeating," he adds. "I was always challenging myself to learn, to find new clips of him every day that I could memorize."
Sarah Drew, who plays gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in the film, believes Apa’s commitment paid off. She remembers the cast all "sort of holding their breath a little bit" before the first table read, "because what an iconic voice [to recreate]."
But those concerns were immediately gone when Apa started reading his lines over the Zoom call, with his camera off. "As soon as [he was] a few lines in, we were all collectively like, 'Are these old tapes of Jimmy Stewart?' He was so pitch perfect, not just in the voice and the cadence, but in the heart of it."
Stewart-Harcourt, 75, also found herself "amazed" by Apa’s portrayal "because he brought Dad to life without doing an impersonation," she says. "Dad's very impersonate-able, but KJ didn't do that. He brought him to life, and I think he did an absolutely remarkable job.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Jimmy' star KJ Apa faced major challenge transforming into Jimmy Stewart
