Actor and producer Nnamdi Asomugha ("Crown Heights") reveals how he made the transition from pro football player to Hollywood; the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) begins with hot movies starring the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Shia LeBoeuf; how the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and High School students turned the crosswalks outside the Broad museum into colorful art.
Art beneath your feet: Crosswalks downtown get a 'Couleur Additive'
From NFL to Hollywood: How this football player pulled off a ‘mind-blowing’ transition
You might know the actor and producer Nnamdi Asomugha from his old job. He was was a cornerback for the Oakland Raiders for years, then he was with the Philadelphia Eagles and he ended his career with the San Francisco 49ers. He also played college football for the University of California, Berkeley.
When Asomugha retired from the NFL in 2013, he landed a producing role on Cary Fukunaga’s "Beasts of No Nation."
You know, a few months after I retired, I find myself in Ghana around the cast and crew, shooting this film and there for a couple of weeks and just being like, three months ago, I was walking into a football stadium getting ready to play now I'm in Ghana with all these cameras and trying to make a movie. It was really one of those mind-blowing moments for me.
Now he’s an actor and producer in the new film "Crown Heights," based on the true story of Collin Warner, who spent 21 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Asomugha plays Carl King, who dedicated his life to helping his childhood friend Warner, played in the film by Lakeith Stanfield.
Asomugha always knew he would get into acting after football–he loved movies and was inspired by a college teammate's performance in "Porgy in Bess." But he fell into producing by chance after a manager had shared a script for "Beasts of No Nation" with him. Three months after he left his career in professional football, he was on the film set in Ghana.
"The thought that you could have these two completely different careers and have them happen so quickly after each other... I was looking around and I was like, is this really happening?" says Asomugha. "I don't know anything about this space. It's foreign to me completely from being in Oakland or Philadelphia, getting ready to play a game. But I still felt a sense of purpose."
When Asomugha stopped by The Frame, he talked about the transition from one career to the next and what, if anything, film and football have in common.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
How he was inspired to be an actor:
A teammate of mine had a play that he was doing and he asked all of us to come and support him. ... I was the ringleader for kind of putting him down and laughing and getting all the guys together. I made five other guys come down and see his play, I think he was doing a play called "Porgy and Bess" down there in Wheeler or whatever it was. And we all went down and he absolutely blew me away. And that was the moment where I said, Oh, you know, this can be cool. It's okay to do this. This doesn't take away from your macho, machismo or whatever it is.
On preparing for life after football:
You kind of have to be secretive about what you're doing post-football because if you're really outward and everyone knows about it while you're playing football then the rap on you is, Oh, you don't care about the game. It happened to a lot of my friends. ... So I knew that I needed to start preparing for life after. I just didn't know how much I could talk about it. Luckily enough for me I reached at level in the game where no one questioned my work ethic or my ability and then I was like, I don't care. Every off-season I might do a scene in a TV show or something just to keep that going.
On getting the role of Carl King in "Crown Heights":
There's a "This American Life" broadcast of Collin and Carl and it's talking about their story. ... It goes through the whole timeline and what Carl did to get [Collin] out. I had never heard it. Matt Ruskin, our director, heard it so he wanted to make the film. So he made a five-minute documentary of the two guys and he was sending it around and it made its way to me. I asked my manager if I could audition for it so we went to Matt. He let me audition, eventually, after he got over the football player thing. He let me audition and I was lucky enough to get that part.
On being telling the true story of Carl and Collin:
I was just honored to be a part of it. I remember we screened it at Sundance. We won the Audience Award at Sundance. And the first premiere that we did there, Collin and Carl were able to get on stage and get a microphone in their hands. And they were able to talk to the crowd and answer questions and tell the people about their story. And that was, to me, the greatest moment of this whole journey because that was the goal.
On the parallels between working in the NFL and working in the film biz:
From the producing standpoint, it's that team atmosphere. Oh man, you miss it so much when you finish playing especially when you play for most of your life. You miss just being a part of a team and being a part of the guys. So I definitely think producing brought that back for me. A bunch of people working together for a common goal.
Months after I retired, the Kings won the Stanley Cup and I was there for that game. ... I happened to be there with a buddy of mine and I was like, Oh, I miss this. The crowd and this whole sort of thing. And I remember asking one of my friends who was still playing at the time, Charles Woodson. I asked him, You know, I really want that feeling again. And he basically told me, You're not going to get that feeling again but try and get as close to that feeling as possible. Two months later, I was doing a reading for a play in New York. Before you come out onto the stage, you have to go through a tunnel. And then when you come out for a reading the whole crowd starts going crazy. And I was just like, This is it.
To hear John Horn's full interview with Nnamdi Asomugha, click on the player above. To get more content like this, subscribe to The Frame podcast.
Social issues take center stage at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival amid Oscar buzz
The next wave of Oscar contenders have descended on Toronto.
Of the nearly 200 films screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, many are having either their world premier or North American premier.
is a film reporter for The L.A. Times who's on the ground in Toronto. When he spoke with The Frame, he explained why this festival is so important to the start of awards season.
There's nothing quite like Toronto in terms of the sheer wattage of both stars but also films and contenders that come here. So among the dozens of films that are set to come out and have all these Oscar ambitions over the coming months, we're going to get a sense of which of those are the cream and which will rise to the top and which will fade away.
Zeitchik's TIFF picks:
"Stronger" directed by David Gordon Green
A film that the director David Gordon Green was behind with Jake Gyllenhaal. It's about the Boston Marathon bombing. Amazon is releasing it a little later in the year. It's quite an intimate and powerful work.
"Mother!" directed by Darron Aronofsky
This will be its North American premier. This is the film with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem that's actually quite an ambitious, audacious work.
"The Upside" directed by Neil Burger
Kevin hart and Bryan Cranston doing a remake of a french film called "Untouchable" that has a lot of people talking about potential performance Oscars.
"Mary Shelley" directed by Haifaa al-Mansour
It stars Elle Fanning. It's, of course, about the English author of several hundred years ago. And it's directed by the first female Saudi Arabian director ever. So I think this film is not only about issues having to do with feminism, politics and society's expectations, but it even comes from an artist who implicitly makes that statement.
"Love Means Zero" directed by Jason Kohn
It's really about the early days of Andre Agassi, vis-a-vis his very polarizing coach, Nick Bollettieri. It is, to my mind, as good a tennis, or as good a sports movie as you'll ever see.
"The Final Year" directed by Greg Barker
This is a director named Greg Barker — a very acclaimed director — who went in to the Obama White House and their foreign policy team — John Kerry, Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes — and basically followed them around for a year.