Toronto’s Stephan James is a knockout in ‘I Play Rocky.’ Here’s how he helped premiere it in his hometown - Toronto Star

The actor brings his charisma — and fancy footwork — to the role of Carl Weathers in Peter Farrelly's crowd-pleaser.

As its title suggests, “I Play Rocky” centres on Sylvester Stallone and his journey in the 1970s from scrappy underdog to Hollywood heavyweight. Star Anthony Ippolito has attracted Oscar buzz since the film bowed in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

But as uncanny as Ippolito is as the young Stallone, he has competition in his own film in the form of Toronto’s Stephan James, who slips invisibly into the flamboyant skin of Sly’s “Rocky” co-star Carl Weathers. The performances are evenly matched: in the same way that Weathers’s charismatic presence as Apollo Creed completed “Rocky,” James’s finely calibrated acting lends director Peter Farrelly’s crowd-pleaser a welcome bit of edge.

“I mean you can’t have one without the other, right?” asks James over Zoom, before answering, “It’s because Apollo Creed is so great that we love Rocky the way we do. We had to have that measuring stick in order to believe the unbelievable.”

This is just the latest high-profile assignment for the Scarborough-born 32-year-old. James, whose older brother Shamier Anderson is also an actor, broke through on “Degrassi: The Next Generation” in 2010 and scored a best-actor Canadian Screen Award for playing Jesse Owens in the acclaimed biopic “Race.” He also earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as a frustrated veteran on the Prime Video series “Homecoming” and starred in Barry Jenkins’s lovely James Baldwin adaptation, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” a role that showcased his range and intensity.

As a stranger-than-fiction story about the creation of one of the unlikeliest blockbusters in history, “I Play Rocky” plays a bit of stick and move with the truth. Its streamlined and unofficial version of events intersects and detours at different points with Stallone’s recently released memoir, “The Steps.”

The scene in which Weathers first arrives for his audition vibrates with authenticity, however. James shows how a former football player with limited acting credits parlayed a mix of swagger and calculation into the role of a lifetime. We see him belittling Stallone behind the scenes, mocking him as inferior without realizing the star’s name is on the script. It turned out that picking a fight with the writer was the smartest thing Weathers ever did.

“I had a lot of source material to look at: “Action Jackson” and “Predator,” the actor said. “I wanted to see what kind of humanity I could find in him.”

“I wanted to get into all the colours and all the grey areas,” James explained. “It’s about his cadences and his nuances — all the things that made him special. His habits, the intonations of his voice. I had a lot of source material to look at: “Action Jackson” and “Predator” … I wanted to see what kind of humanity I could find in him.”

That sense of depth is necessary given that Apollo Creed is one of the most complex Black characters of his era: a foil who doubled for many audiences as a cultural hero.

“I don’t know if I ever saw Apollo Creed as the villain,” offered James. “I remember feeling excited when I first saw ‘Rocky.’ I remember feeling inspired, like wanting to be on my feet. I was basically shadowboxing in front of the TV. I remember how important I thought Apollo Creed was. I was certainly just as invested in him and his journey as I was in Rocky’s.”

In addition to his love for “Rocky,” James says that he was excited to work with Farrelly (“There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb and Dumber”), whom he credits with helping to make some of the funniest movies of all time. He explains, though, that on-set, the director, who previously helmed the best-picture-winning “Green Book” (and received an Oscar for that film’s screenplay) tried to dial back the comedy as much as possible.

Anthony Ippolito plays Sylvester Stallone and Stephen James is Carl Weathers in “I Play Rocky.” 

“Pete would say, ‘We’re not trying to be funny … like, if people laugh, they laugh.’ We were doing something grounded in real life — that was the intention. I do think there are comedic notes that get woven in, and there’s a spirit in there that really picks up. Pete knows how to find those moments, to find laughs in dark moments. That’s a credit to him, but I don’t think we set out to make a comedy.”

Part of keeping “I Play Rocky” so grounded was making sure that Ippolito and James could box at least as convincingly as Stallone and Weathers (if not Rocky and Apollo). James says that while he’s not a fighter by nature, he learned to hold his own.

“I’ve probably taken more punches (in my life) than I’ve thrown,” he said with a laugh. “I think I was sort of in the same situation as (Weathers), in that I got cast because I looked like I was in good enough shape to pull things off.

“But I had no prior boxing experience,” he added. “In the movie, I can see myself learning those things, picking up the steps, all the things you need to refine what you’re doing. It became more of a dance, a lot of choreographed moves rather than free-flowing boxing. But it was amazing to get to learn the art, to spend time on my footwork.”

At TIFF, “I Play Rocky” was the runner-up for the festival’s people’s choice award. The victory by the Spanish film “La Bola Negra” was almost as big an upset as the Italian Stallion earning a split decision against Creed. James isn’t shy about saying he threw his weight around a bit to make sure that “I Play Rocky” had its world premiere in his hometown.

“I have a very special history with the Toronto International Film Festival,” said the actor, who will soon be seen in the Nicole Kidman-Elle Fanning legal thriller “Discretion.”

“I was a kid seeing it from the outside when I was growing up. Anyway, the timing (with ‘I Play Rocky’) was such that we thought, ‘Maybe we could do a festival.’

“I didn’t know what the studio had planned. I didn’t know what Pete wanted to do. But I saw him in Las Vegas earlier this year and I said, ‘You know what, this film is so special … I gotta tell you, Pete, if we showed in Toronto, it would be magical for that audience to receive the film. It was as simple as that. He was like, ‘You know what, OK.’”

Adam Nayman is a Toronto-based critic, lecturer and author. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @brofromanother.