The sound of rubber sneakers screeching against hard floor inundates the corridors of a sports center tucked in the suburbs of Zurich. It is then cut by the thudding of a heavy metal door. Tucked in the corner of a four-by-four boxing ring is Anthony Ippolito, wearing a thick cream pullover, a neatly pressed shirt with edges as sharp as his jawline and impeccably fitted brown slacks. It’s a look that stands in contrast to the pictures of sweaty, shirtless boxers that hang on the walls. The dark-haired star just landed in Switzerland, where he is to present the European premiere of Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky.”
When I ask if he remembers the first time he walked into a ring, he immediately says yes. “It was for this movie,” he laughs. “You saw how you have to do the thing with the rope, so that was a learning curve. That was fun.” Did he feel the sense of mythology about the ring? “I actually did, yeah. It kind of feels like you’re in the Colosseum.”
Courtesy of Rafa Sales Ross
“Rocky” would, of course, go on to become a major success, landing three Oscars in 1976 and beating “Taxi Driver” and “All the President’s Men” for Best Picture. The original film spanned another five “Rocky” instalments, and a “Creed” franchise inspired by Rocky Balboa’s famed rival, Apollo Creed. “He’s been around pretty much my entire childhood,” says Ippolito of Stallone.
“It was a baptism by fire,” says Ippolito when asked if having played Pacino helped him find the confidence to tackle another screen legend. “It did help, because, conceptually at least, you immediately understand that the goal is to try to strip down the icon part of it, the celebrity part of it, and look at the man. It’s the same task here, but also very different because they are very different men.”
“Having been able to speak to him after doing over a year of research was really kind of overwhelming, obviously, because at this point it’s become this massive thing to me,” says Ippolito. “What was really interesting and stuck out to me was hearing the parallels between ‘Rocky’ being an underdog in the story that he wrote and him being an underdog in his own life.”
Courtesy of Rafa Sales Ross
Once he figured out the drawl, he needed to figure out the physicality. “I Play Rocky” features surprisingly few boxing scenes for a film about “Rocky,” but much of Ippolito’s performance still relies on a deep grasp of how Stallone moves—from curling into himself at the sight of a pretty cinema usher, to the side-to-side slant of his upward running. Ippolito felt the physicality of fighting, and that of simply being were “pretty closely linked.”
Being on set with a great team also helped, he says. Costume designer Amy Roth watched hours and hours of footage of a young Stallone to nail the feel of his wardrobe, while production designer Anthony Gasparro meticulously recreated the sets from the 1976 movie. “As an actor, you hope that the people working on the project with you are as meticulous and detail-oriented as you’d like to be in your approach, and they all help each other.”
Alas, while Ippolito felt mentally settled to be on set, nothing could quite have prepared him for the avalanche that is having a film of such visibility come into the world. The “I Play Rocky” world premiere in Toronto kicked off the film’s journey with a bang, with Variety’s Owen Gleiberman calling it “a cleverly crafted crowd-pleaser” and saying its star “gets it just right.”
Every time I pay Ippolito a compliment, big or small, he turns his gaze downwards and says a hearty thank you, the Stallone drawl still tugging in his voice. It’s easy to get a sense of how much it means to him for someone to connect with his performance, but also how overwhelming it is to have the film become a public thing after two years of inhabiting a tight filmmaking cocoon.
“I Play Rocky,” courtesy of FilmNation
Playing an Oscar-winning icon in a film directed by an Oscar-winner about the making of an Oscar-winning film has predictably catapulted Ippolito into the Oscar conversation. When I bring the subject up, the young performer is promptly courteous but never dismissive: “There are so many foreign things to me unfolding so quickly. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I think it’s just really good that people are having a very positive response to the movie,” he goes on. “As it relates to awards season, hopefully that gives more encouragement for people to go see the movie. That is the goal: to have as many people as possible have a relationship with this movie.”
“I Play Rocky” opens in a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on Nov. 6, before expanding nationwide on Nov. 20 via Amazon MGM Studios.
