Unstoppable Interview: Jharrel Jerome & Michael Peña on Anthony's Story

Allison with FlickDirect and I'm here with Jharrel Jerome and Michael Peña to talk about Unstoppable. Hello gentlemen, how are you? Good, good. Okay, first and foremost, as a fellow January baby, happy birthday, sir. Thank you, thank you. Are you a Capricorn? No, I'm on the cusp, so I go with Aquarius. I'm the 21st. Whatever, it's cool. Good luck. No, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

But we got you a little gift. Oh, let's go. There you go. That's cool. Thank you, thank you. See you, you both. You gotta work on your birthday, you get gifts. Alright, we need to talk about this movie and Anthony. So tell me, why is Anthony's story so important? There's so many reasons. First of all, just today. Today I think we're all under this sort of darkness, a cloud above us all, no matter who we are.

So I think movie has always been an escape and been medicine. And this is, I think, the sweetest medicine right now at the sweetest time. On top of the family aspect of the film. I think, I don't know, at least in my generation, social media has allowed this sort of individual, individual way of thinking. And it's like, it's all about me and me and me.

And I think it's always important to lean on community, lean on family, and lean on support. And this film reminds you of that. And Anthony's faced adversity more than anybody you can think of. And he's overcome. So you know, if you were born with your two legs, it's something that you can appreciate and realize that not everybody's as blessed. And so Anthony is a good reminder of overcoming adversity.

Michael. So, Jarrell talked about family, but how important was Bobby in Anthony's life? I think it was, it was like part of the family as well. You know what I mean? It was like, he had two father figures, you know, one in Don Cheadle when he's older, you know, and he's in college and then he has the high school guy. Like for me, I remember Mr. Lyles, you know, he's my math teacher and then track, you know, track guy.

And he's the one, he's the first guy to believe in me. And I, you know, I did well in math and he's like, I'm going to put you in college. I was like, wait a minute, what? And he wanted to challenge me, you know, and I still remember and I still talk to him to this day. So those kinds of impressions, like, I mean, they just last for a lifetime, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. It's so amazing how everybody has that high school person, teacher, coach, whatever. Yeah, or that you hope so. Yes, absolutely. Talking about Anthony and the physicality of this role, how difficult was it for you at being an able-bodied actor? Um. Yeah, it's definitely one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I just learned certain things that normally we wouldn't learn, you know, crutches, for example, you sprain your ankle for two weeks, you kind of just wobble around on them.

But I had to learn them and I had to be in control and I had to make them my way of moving because that's Anthony's way of moving. So that part was important for me. And that wasn't easy. I was like, it hurt a lot. On top of wrestling, you know, it's one thing to learn wrestling, the sport, the fundamentals, but it's another thing to learn Anthony's wrestling.

Yeah. And I learned a lot of wrestling, which is on the ground and his specific style. So he coached me the entire time and we trained for months together on end. And that wasn't easy, you know. He's a master at his, you know, at what people would call his disadvantage, you know. He'd made it his advantage. So there's moves that he can do that nobody in the world can do.

So I had like, there was a couple of times, there was a couple of moves I would look at him like, let's cut that one out. Yeah, let's cut that one out. I can't get my body that way. Um. But that's what made him so impressive. And him being so willing to be there and teach me, there was no better teacher, no better coach. And having met Anthony, what did you learn from him in terms of his personality, his perseverance, all of just him as an individual?

Because he could have really taken this a really bad direction and been angry. Yeah. I'm like, I don't sense any of that. Like I'm nice. When I met him, I was like a fan because I saw him actually win like the national championship and so I knew his story. But then when I read the script, I didn't know all of his story. I didn't know that he had adversity after adversity after I'm like, he just had so many hills to climb figuratively and literally that it's, it's, it's great to, you know, it was great for me just to even read the script.

Yeah. you Thank you. you