Carl Weathers in one of the most underrated heroes of the 1980s and beyond. Even as Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies, he found a place in our hearts. And who didn’t cry – spoiler alert – when he died fighting Ivan Drago? Back in 2009, we had a chance to interview Carl. His TV series “Brothers” was doing well, so we had a chance to catch up and talk Rocky, Predator, Happy Gilmore, Action Jackson and even my personal favorite – Force 10 from Navarone. Here’s a transcript from our chat. You can listen to the full interview here.
Sean Daly: Hey, Carl?
Carl Weathers: Yes.
SD: Hey, this is Sean Daly. I’m a writer for the St. Pete Times. How are you?
CW: I’m doing good, Sean, how about you?
SD: Oh, I’m excellent now. Hey, I’m joined by Steve Spears, who’s a entertainment editor with tampabay.com. And we gotta say, Carl, you have been a dream interview for years for us.
CW: Oh, fantastic. Thank you.
SD: I mean, we’re huge fans. You even sound like Carl Weathers. That’s awesome.
CW: [laughter] It’s nice to know.
SD: Hey, so you’re rocking it. Brothers, Sunday nights on Fox.
CW: Yeah. Yeah, we’re having a great time too. Really great time.
SD: Are you giving Strahan acting tips?
CW: There’s, I wish I could say I was, but the guy is so talented and he’s such a natural, and he is such a great guy to be around. There are no tips. His work ethic is just, I mean, it’s stellar, man. So, he’s actually an inspiration in a lot of ways because he’s a fun guy and he’s a guy who just comes to do the work, and there’s never any, there’s just no issues, you know? So it’s great to have a guy who comes from the NFL at the level that Mike did and to see him just succeed. I just love it.
SD: Hey, let me ask you, why do football players always make such good actors better than other athletes?
CW: Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to it, really but I think there is something about the world of football and the form of entertainment that it is. It just seems to, if a guy like Mike who is photogenic and a guy is smart, and the guy is articulate, and the guy is a quick study as he is, who just, the camera seems to love him, who has that ability. It just works time and time again, and just seems that football, I guess, provides the kind of world that best suits what guys in front of the camera who are actors do, and maybe much more so than a lot of other sports do.
Steve Spears: Yeah. It’s okay to say football players are just smarter. I mean, I played football too.
[laughter]
CW: Well, the, funny thing is this, I don’t know that acting and and intelligence are necessarily, they don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Or being smart and being an actor necessarily goes hand in hand. But there is something about the ability to translate what you feel on the camera and have personality come through. And football does allow for a lot of that.
SS: Let me ask you this. If football players make great actors, why is it that the co-stars of Predators make such good governors.
CW: Funny that you ask. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think those egos in Predator were so substantial that the guys in that movie all seemed to think, we could do anything. So maybe there’s the answer, I don’t know. But you had guys there involved, myself included, who always had tremendous aspirations. As they perspired, they aspired. [chuckle] So, maybe that’s the answer. It was a little… Obviously though, a little infectious because the politics on that set didn’t seem to be as pervasive as the politics after the movie was made seemed to be, and how it carried, certainly Arnold and Jesse into governorship.
SS: What was that like? That must have been like a huge, like, pissing contest that, I mean, so all those egos and macho.
CW: Constantly, constantly, constantly. We had so much fun with it though, because, as much as you can push another guy when you’re in an environment like that, if he for a moment shows a crack in his armor, boy, you just get in and you just, [chuckle] you’re like a vampire. You go in and suck the blood out of him. But in that case, those egos were so huge. Nobody would let anybody get the best of them. It just was. And also, how do you retain your own personality despite how another guy might try to mess with you and bring you down? It was just great every day to be with a group of guys like that. Just a lot of sweat. Didn’t have to worry about your wardrobe, didn’t have to worry about makeup. It didn’t matter. You just got there and mowed down the jungle.
[laughter]
SD: Hey, so when you walk down the street, Carl, I mean, what do you usually get the most when people shout out at you? Do you get Apollo, do you get Chubbs? Do you get Action Jackson? What do people usually shout out?
CW: It depends on where I am, different age groups. It’s funny, if you’re anywhere from a 16 to a 20 something, it’s either Chubbs, Arrested Development.
SD: Oh, right, yeah.
CW: If it’s a family group, it’s Predator or mostly, Rocky but sometimes Predator pops up. And if it’s just those sort of geeks who love action movies, then of course it’s gonna be Predator. There’s just no question about it. So it’s just kind of funny. And most recently, obviously people who love comedy, between Arrested Development and Brothers. I mean, that seems to be the thing.
SS: I gotta ask one question about Brothers. I was watching it again last night online on the Fox website, and I keep staring at the part of your upper lip where that beautiful mustache used to be.
CW: Used to be. I know. Well, I’m hearing two things. It’s like, man, you shaved all your hair off, man, and your mustache. And it’s like, whoa, what’s going on with you? And all I can say is, it’s another era, another time. Carl Weathers had to reinvent himself yet again, because if I’m doing the same thing and appearing to be the same person, it’s just very hard to keep people interested. They just, you know they, “Hey, man, I saw you already, you did that.” You know? So the mustache went the way of everything else into the new me.
SD: I don’t know. There are three people who should always have a mustache. Carl Weathers, John Oates from Hall & Oates and Tom Selleck.
CW: Oh my God. You know how often I hear this about the mustache? [laughter] What am I gonna do now, man, I’m gonna have to grow the damn thing back. Come on.
SD: You’re Carl Weathers. You can do whatever you want.
CW: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
SS: You mentioned Rocky, and I’ve always… I mean, you appear in the first four Rocky movies. Do you have a personal favorite moment from those films?
CW: Wow. That’s a good question. Well, I mean, first of all, the first Rocky was just, it was just, it was what it was, man. It was sort of the genesis of a career that’s lasted for a long time. Even though I’d done work before that, that was the thing that sort of put me in people’s minds and in front of people in a particular way. I don’t know about a favorite moment. I think of all the things that are memorable for me was in Rocky 4 being on the same stage with James Brown.
SD: Yes. Living in America.
CW: Growing up as a kid and an icon like James Brown, and then to actually wind up on the stage with him. I mean, that’s, man, that’s… How many people can say that one of… An American icon you shared the stage with and had a great time being on stage with him. So that was a special moment.
SS: I know Sean and I have our favorite moment, and that’s the end of Rocky 3 with the bout between you and Stallone, where no one’s there to watch. And you kick it off with the old ding ding.
CW: Ding ding. Yep.
SD: Awesome. Hey, going back to the James Brown thing, do you still have your patriotic shorts? They let you keep those?
CW: I do have my patriotic shorts. How could I lose them, man? No way. [laughter] No way could I lose the patriotic shorts.
SD: Hey, and all the times that you and Stallone were doing all those things, you must’ve popped him a few times, right?
CW: It happened that he popped me a few times too, so it wasn’t like I was the only one doing the hitting. Boy, I’ll tell you, this guy for all his power and everything else, he made quite a few mistakes there with pulling those punches. Sometimes they didn’t get pulled.
SD: Wow. But come on, Weathers versus Stallone, you’d take Weathers every time.
CW: Well, from your mouth to God’s ear, [laughter] I would pick Weathers every time.
SD: Hey Carl, let’s talk about you and Adam Sandler. At first, it seems like kind of strange bedfellows, but then you guys have had this chemistry that especially with Happy Gilmore that really, really paid off. You’re a great comedic actor.
CW: Well, you know what, we had a great time. It worked really well and it continues. People just like those movies. And Adam was… Adam is fantastic human being anyway, really good guy. I just saw him actually about a week and a half ago. And he had a black eye. He’d been out playing basketball. He’s such a macho dude. He’s out there playing basketball and somebody smacked him and I mean, it just swole up he had this big black eye. But he is a cool guy. He is a really, really cool guy.
SS: The other guy that you appear with in Happy Gilmore is Richard Kiel, right?
CW: Richard Kiel, my God. Yeah. And Richard Kiel and I go back to a movie that I did back in the…
SD: Force 10 from Navarone.
CW: That’s right. Force 10 from Navarone.
SD: It’s Steve’s favorite Carl Weathers movie.
SS: It is, it is the very first movie I ever saw you in. I still own it on DVD. I love it.
CW: No kidding. We shot that movie in Yugoslavia. We were all over Yugoslavia. We were on the isle of Jersey. We were in London at Shepperton Studios. That was about five months it took to shoot that movie.
SS: It’s fantastic. I love it. You you play Sergeant Weaver, and if I saw you walking down the street, I would say, “Hey, Sergeant Weaver.” [laughter]
CW: Everybody has a favorite character. I love it. It’s just, it’s amazing when you… Boy, when you’ve been around as long as I’ve been around, it’s interesting to say that now but… And done so many different roles and people like the movies. It’s really gratifying.