Pickleball has made it off the court and onto your TV screens. “The Dink” is a sports comedy with drama and some romance. You can stream on Apple TV now. But last week, I interviewed the cast in the Big Apple, where we tried to stay out of the kitchen.
Pickleball isn’t just taking over tennis courts everywhere.
It’s also taking on Apple TV and the new sports comedy The Dink, starring Jake Johnson and Mary Steenburgen as unlikely friends, or maybe more.
Alex Miranda: “What is the deal with this sport? People play it one time, and they become obsessed.”
Jake Johnson: “We had this in the 80s with the crack cocaine epidemic, but this is the next one.”
Alex Miranda: “They mirror each other.”
Jake Johnson: “They mirror them. If you do this once, you’re hooked.”
Alex Miranda: “You’ve got to do another movie, like Cocaine Bear. Cocaine Pickle Pockets.”
Jake Johnson: “Yes. That would be very funny.”
Mary Steenburgen: “My son gave me my first paddle and told me he thought I would love this game. I started taking lessons, and two months in, that phone call comes that they want me to star and produced by Ben Stiller with all these extraordinary actors. I mean, it almost was like I was being pranked by heaven.”
Alex Miranda: “What I love about your character is that she is in this transition moment in her life.”
Mary Steenburgen: “I felt like Candace genuinely was lonely. She’s gone through a divorce. Her husband got all the friends for some reason, probably the money. And she tries to support. And she doesn’t have a partner. But she finally asked this, like, total washed-up, loser, bad attitude guy.”
Jake Johnson: “They kind of meet each other at a strange time as pickleball partners and become very close friends and kind of get intertwined in each other’s life.”
Mary Steenburgen: “They just have this utterly unique relationship that you really haven’t seen in film.”
Jake Johnson: “And adventure ensues.”
Well, I don’t know how dorky it can be with all this freaky terminology.
Mary Steenburgen: “Nasty Nelson is the good one. It’s so weird. It’s so convoluted.”
Alex Miranda: “What is that? Is it a pittance around the children or?”
Mary Steenburgen: “No, it is totally. It’s [expletive]. There’s also a shot called ATP that’s around the bowl, and then there’s trick shots between the legs.”
Stream The Dink on Apple TV now.
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