Fresh from high school and 19 years old, Zachary Levi remembers “watching it all go down in real-time” as St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner led his team to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV with a 23-16 win over the Tennessee Titans at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on Jan. 30, 2000. What a moment in history it was to witness as Warner earned MVP status for the big game, capping what many call one of the greatest stories in NFL history.
The Iowa native, who had been stocking shelves at a grocery store just a few short years before, seemed stuck as an undrafted free agent after a standout college career at the University of Northern Iowa and getting dropped by the Green Bay Packers. Warner found success in arena football with the Iowa Barnstormers before eventually getting signed by the Rams in 1998.
“It was this insane Cinderella story,” Levi detailed to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday night at the premiere of his new film American Underdog. In the Lionsgate film, Levi toplines as Warner alongside Anna Paquin who plays wife Brenda Warner. “This guy came out of nowhere to go take the Rams all the way to a Super Bowl and win it out of nowhere. It was so inspiring and then when I read the script, his story is even more inspiring because of the meat of it. There’s so much more detail and there’s so much depth to who Kurt is, who Brenda is, their relationship, the kids, their faith in one another, the struggles they had and their love through it all. Once I realized that was the story being told here, I wanted to be a part of telling that story.”
The story being told is the one pulled directly from Warner’s memoir, All Things Possible: My Story of Faith, Football, and the First Miracle Season, and adapted by writers Jon Gunn and David Aaron Cohen along with Jon Erwin, the latter of whom co-directed with his brother Andrew Erwin. All of the above were present at Wednesday’s event, held at TCL Chinese Theatre on a frigid night in Los Angeles with temperatures dropping close to 50 degrees. And it had the look and feel of a typical Hollywood premiere with a carpet, crews and suited up celebrities but many of the guests would not be out of a place at SoFi Stadium on the weekends as there were dozens of fans decked out in Rams gear and even a gaggle of Rams cheerleaders.
Lionsgate and event producers also made sure to amp up the authentic football energy by posting the Vince Lombardi Trophy from the Rams’ Super Bowl XXXIV on the carpet and stacking the after-party with Warner’s jerseys and a wall full of trophies. But with that hardware and now a film about his life ready to roll out in theaters on Christmas Day, you won’t catch Warner acting the part of a Hollywood diva. The NFL Hall of Famer never strays far from his humble roots.
“We’re just two normal people that have lived life,” Kurt told THR on the carpet during a joint interview with Brenda. “We know most people have lived life like we did, with struggles and challenges and their own supermarket moments. Stepping on a carpet like this, it’s easy to ask, ‘Why are they making a movie about us? What really did we do other than just live our lives and battle?’ But with that comes humility and if there’s something in our story that can impact and encourage other people and give them hope to show that the possibilities are endless no matter where you find yourself, it’s worth it. I’m humbled by all of it, that’s the biggest emotion I have right now.”
Same for Brenda, who also said she’s honored to be portrayed onscreen by Oscar winner Anna Paquin. “When I first got to talk to her, she wanted to know why I believe what I believe because she doesn’t necessarily believe what I believe and yet she took it on and she said, ‘I want to do right,’” said Brenda, whose faith infuses much of the story. “I’m honored that she put in the work and got to know me. I have friends that I have known since I was 10 years old and they saw her performance and said, ‘There were times it felt just like you.’ She did a great job.”
Paquin said the two had some “really amazing conversations” in prepping for the performance. “She is an American woman from the Midwest who has a really strong and beautifully profound relationship with her faith and her religion. That is not my background,” Paquin explained. “I’m kind of Catholic but it wasn’t really a huge part of what formed me as a person, and I actually just was incredibly curious as to what that feels like and what that relationship is like and the specifics of it. I wanted to know details, on a more granular level, to understand how that feels and how their faith works.”
Even the genre of American Underdog, an inspiring story about redemption, faith, family, love and football, isn’t one that might come up on Paquin’s screen. “I listen to serial killer podcasts and watch lots of really depressing documentaries, so the happy, lovey-dovey movies in general don’t tend to show up on my algorithm on any platform,” she said with a smile.
It is, however, right in the wheelhouse of the Erwin brothers, who previously teamed on the features I Still Believe and I Can Only Imagine. Says Jon: “We grew up in the South, not far from the Heartland, and all those themes of faith, family and values are so ingrained and important to us. This story really is, it’s a love letter to the Heartland. It’s a love letter to dreamers everywhere, and I just love the theme of never giving up on your dreams, on your destiny, on your calling in life, and that’s what I hope people think when they see this, that maybe my dream is possible too.”
Adds Andrew: “Kurt Warner is the holy grail. If you looked up underdog in the dictionary, it would have his name next to it.” He added that they were lucky to land Levi for the title role, thanks to a scheduling push on the next installment of his franchise Shazam! due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “He was at the very top of the list to play Kurt but he wasn’t available,” Andrew explained. “Then COVID pushed Shazam! and we had to push, too, and he ultimately became available. In the destiny of things, it’s amazing to see how this came together. Zach Levi was born to play this role.”
American Underdog is in theaters on Dec. 25.
