Exclusive: Winning Time stars John C. Reilly, Sally Field and more talk Lakers legacy

With March Madness nearly upon us, there’s no better time to start steaming Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty than this Sunday, March 6 when it premieres on HBO Max.

The fast-break series follows the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers throughout 1980s as they become one of the top teams in the entire franchise. Their indelible impact on the game basketball is covered along with everything that went on off the court as well.

Winning Time features an incredibly star-studded cast with John C. Reilly as Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Jason Clarke as Jerry West, up-and-coming actor Quincy Isaish as Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Sally Field as Jessie Buss, and more.

Of the many iconic characters, Reilly has played throughout his decorated character, Jerry Buss was one of his most unique, especially since he had such a short timeframe to prepare and get into the mindset of the late, great Lakers owner.

Winning Time stars John C. Reilly, Sally Field and more talk Lakers legacy

“I had seven days,” Reilly admitted to Hidden Remote. “If I had seven months, I would’ve spent seven months worrying about how this guy talked and how he walked, talked and looked. And there’s not a lot of information out there about Jerry. There’s hearsay and people saying, ‘He told me this,’ or, ‘He told me that,’ but Jerry was a pretty private guy once he became the owner. I knew with Adam McKay, having done Step Brothers and Talladega Nights with him, I was going to be in a real sweet spot having Adam in my corner and that Adam would give me the freedom and the support to do what I had to do.”

Reilly understood Buss from the moment he read the script because of the similarities he shared with him. He felt like he could relate to Buss having come from a humble background himself, having an optimistic outlook on life and achieving great things.

He believes he benefited from having a brief preparation period and that the improvisation worked out for him. Quincy Isaiah, who portrayed Magic Johnson himself, had more time to mull over the career-changing role but didn’t let it get to him as he wanted to be as authentic and as truthful to the character as possible.

“I was nervous, I was very nervous,” Isaiah said. “You know, I’m playing an icon, but I will say, eventually you rely on the work and just get to work. You can’t think too much about all that. You just have to work on your character and put your all into that. Having the team that we have including Adam and having Max [Borenstein] and Rodney [Barnes] be the writers on it, knowing what they can do with the script and bringing that to life, seeing the work that we did, especially the scenes I felt nervous in, that’s what made me relax. Now I can let my shoulders down and just play, figure out who my character is and go from there.”

Max Borenstein and Rodney Barnes are the executive producers of Winning Time

As noted, Max Borenstein and Rodney Barnes serve as the executive producers of Winning Time and as the showrunner in Borenstein’s case. They do an exceptional job of bringing this story to life in such a compelling way, which includes some of the main characters breaking the fourth wall and speaking straight into the camera.

It’s not an approach taken often, but it works wonderfully with Winning Time. Borenstein had his reservations at first but noticed that it was only going to add to the series once they started doing it, adding that many cast members wanted that fourth-wall-breaking dialogue at one point or another.

“There are never an guarantees creatively and we definitely knew it’d be a high-risk thing,” Bornenstein said. “The first day on set for the pilot happened to be the scene on the golf course when John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss addresses the camera while Jason Clarke as Jerry West is ranting in the background about the potential drafting of Magic Johnson and it’s also literally the first shot he addresses the camera. Up until that moment, to be honest with you, we didn’t know how well it was going to work.

“The moment he did that, suddenly did he not only convey the information that he did, it also allowed him as the extraordinary actor that he is convey all this personality that’s underneath that,” he continued. “We got a window into the facts about Jerry West but also the personality of Jerry Buss being this P.T. Barnum taking us through this journey. We looked at each other said, ‘We’re going to have keep going to the well more and more.’”

A well-done sports show can be hard to come by depending on who’s behind it and the actors involved, but then again, there have been quite a few fantastic ones in recent years. Winning Time stands on its own two feet with Rotten Tomatoes contributing editor and sports aficionado Mark Ellis predicting that it will set the tone for every sports-centric show we see going forward.

“Winning Time has a chance to be special because the stakes are so much higher for this show than any sports biopic narrative in history,” Ellis said. “The players, coaches, front office and fans are all more famous than any other team a film crew dared to recapture. The Showtime Lakers always rose to the occasion on the biggest of stages. Now Winning Time has all the pressure to cement its legacy as the greatest basketball show of all-time…can it pull off a championship run?  One thing’s for sure, much like any sports fan who lived through the ’80s, I guarantee we’ll be watching.”

Winning Time behind the scenes

He added that one of its biggest challenges will be capturing the true essence of basketball and not letting the sport itself play second fiddle to the story being told and the drama playing out when the scoreboards aren’t on.

“One of the biggest challenges for Winning Time on the court will be replicating the exciting fast-break heavy offense run by Magic and company, but the essence of that team transcended the court,” Ellis said. “The breakneck pace of the team carried over to the Hollywood Hills after the sun had set over the Pacific Ocean, and the challenge there is to give us an authentic peak into how the rich and famous lifestyle granted by basketball success mirrored the on-court product. When the ball rested and the Forum lights shut down, that’s when the real game tipped off. For Winning Time to live up to its title, we’ll need a VIP ticket to witness everything in its full glory, even if some of it wasn’t glamorous.”

Lifelong Lakers fan and esteemed actress Sally Field was thrilled to be asked to be a part of the project. She started following the franchise in the late ’70s and ’80s and attended countless games as a single mother with two boys. Their shared love for the Lakers still bonds them to this day.

“I loved the Lakers then and I love them now. I was there watching them play and watching them become the feel of what the Lakers were at that time,” Field said. “Los Angles became Laker-ville. It was so huge. When I got this screenplay, I almost didn’t even have to read it. I wanted to be a part of it, I wanted to be there.”

Notable names such as Adrien Brody and Jason Clarke are among the star-studded cast as well and both portray popular players. Each of them had their own moments where a flip was switched and they really hit their stride in their respective roles.

“I was yearning for the breaking point for Pat, and it’s this moment where he knows he’s on the precipice of if they’re going to make it and the precarious place Pat’s in at that moment and that everything’s on the line and that he can easily get kicked to the curb,” said Brody, who plays Pat Riley. “I think the stakes were so high, so I was yearning to get to that point and let him have it. I know what that struggle is. One wrong step and it’s gone and one right step and it’s there.”

Clarke followed up with, “That’s a good question because you need that point in every production and sometimes earlier the better. That scene you want to get to might be up straight away or you may have to do these other scenes in between, but you just want to know. You want to feel it in your bones that you’ve touched that core of them and that you’ve served the director and the story. For me in the pilot, we had that golf scene and I was wound up.”

For Jason Segel, Winning Time was another opportunity to branch out of his comfort zone and do something different. It wasn’t until later on in his acting career that he realized he had spent a majority of his adulthood on sets (including eight years on How I Met Your Mother) and that it wasn’t time bracketed away from his actual life.

Going forward, he wants to learn something from every role he takes and strive to be smarter and better coming out of each one.

“Around 33-years-old, I realized I had done a lot of one type of thing and I really wanted to make the most of this life and this career,” Segel said. “One of the opportunities that’s afforded to you when you have a few successes under your belt is that you can start to choose what you want to do, which is a real luxury, but I was choosing the same thing over and over again, so I decided to really mix it up. Everything I choose now, I want it to be something where I come out of it a little bit different.

“I looked at this project and knew I’d learn a lot from being around these actors,” he added. “There were a few scenes in the script I was a little scared of, which is always exciting to me. There’s some scenes where I’m lamenting over Jack’s accident and I said to myself, ‘You have to be a really good actor to do this,’ and I wonder if I am. I really like that feeling a lot. There’s nothing more exciting than finding out some of these private questions.”

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty is now streaming on HBO Max.