It’s probably the single greatest Hollywood fairy tale of all time: how Sylvester Stallone fought to star in Rocky after his script won attention around Tinseltown. No one thought Stallone, who had only a few B-movies under his belt and a pronounced speech impediment, could be any kind of draw, but his tenacity won out, and Rocky became a seminal classic, winning the Best Picture Oscar for 1976. Now, this classic story is getting a big-screen retelling in I Play Rocky, a movie we saw and loved at the Toronto International Film Festival.
It turns out star Anthony Ippolito’s struggle to be cast as Sylvester Stallone had some strong parallels to Sly’s own story. Like Sly, he was mostly unknown, although he had gotten some attention for playing Al Pacino in the Paramount+ series The Offer. Recently, we sat down with Ippolito in L.A. to discuss playing Stallone, and he told us all about how he chased the role on his own. Having never been asked to audition, he simply read about the movie in a trade paper and decided to pursue the part and get himself into the conversation. And so he did, with his acting in the film being hailed by the Stallone family and putting him in the Oscar conversation.
In our chat with Ippolito, he talks about how long he had to prep for the part, both physically and mentally, including the material he studied to do justice to both Stallone and his most famous creation, the Italian Stallion himself, Rocky Balboa. Here at JoBlo, we’re massive fans of both the franchise and Stallone himself, but I can tell you, having seen it, that Ippolito and director Peter Farrelly do his story justice. Keep an eye out for more of our I Play Rocky interviews. It opens in limited release today but expands nationwide on November 20th.
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