Speaking at the Rome Film Fest press conference for Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, Anthony Ippolito described the “weight of the responsibility”
Speaking at the Rome Film Fest press conference for Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, Anthony Ippolito described the “weight of the responsibility” of playing a youthful Sylvester Stallone, and a physically gruelling shoot that left him ill by its final days.
“There was a lot of intimidation at the beginning,” said Ippolito, who is also in Rome to receive the festival’s Progressive Award, which honours promising careers in the making.
“I was a fan of the movies and a fan of the character, and I understand how many people are, so I did feel the weight of the responsibility. But like any other situation, you just start by researching as much as you can.”
I Play Rocky charts the making of 1976’s Rocky, which a then-unknown Stallone wrote and refused to sell unless he could play the lead. The film also stars Stephan James as Carl Weathers, Matt Dillon as Stallone’s father and Jay Duplass as director John G. Avildsen.
Ippolito transformed his body and modelled his performance to mimic the personality and voice of a youthful Stallone, who was yet to turn 30 when Rocky was made and had grown up inspired by bodybuilder-turned-actor Steve Reeves, building his physique from a youthful age while living with facial paralysis.
“I don’t want to say as a compensation for the paralysis, but it was a very interesting and necessary part of the character,” said Ippolito, who also gained “a considerable amount of weight” for the role.
Casting
According to Farrelly, also participating in the Rome press conference, Ippolito landed the breakout role after sending in a self-tape audition tape performing scenes from the script. “He was the first person we looked at, the only person,” said the director. “When I saw it, I said, ‘That’s it, search is over.’ I didn’t care if he’d ever been in anything else.”
Only later, during pre-production, did Farrelly discover that Ippolito had previously played a youthful Al Pacino in Paramount+ series The Offer, about the making of The Godfather.
Asked about the recent trend for actors to replicate real-life figures as exactly as possible, Farrelly said impressions alone were not enough. “A lot of people have done impressions of Stallone. Jim Carrey does an amazing one, but it’s not real. We wanted to capture the essence of Stallone.
“As good as this script was, if you had a different actor, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’re here because he became Stallone,” added Farrelly.
Ippolito, who spent more than a year studying Stallone’s interviews online and comparing them with Rocky, pointed out that Stallone’s vocal and physical mannerisms had to be replicated because it is part of the plot. “The studio wanted all these other actors, celebrities at the time, because he didn’t look and talk like a movie star,” he said.
About a month before shooting, Ippolito finally got the chance to speak to Stallone, and described him as “very open and generous [about] what it was like to be in those rooms with the producers, and before that, when he was really down and out”.
“He did feel very much like a lone wolf, kind of like an orphan in life in a lot of ways,” added Ippolito. “He had so much going against him and he persevered through so much. His endurance, I think, radiates through Rocky.”
Test of endurance
I Play Rocky’s production mirrored the original’s struggles, according to Farrelly: “They shot Rocky in 28 days. We shot this in 34 days. That’s tight.”
For Ippolito, the shoot became his own test of endurance. Scenes shot in icy warehouses in New Jersey and Philadelphia in November, while being repeatedly sprayed down with counterfeit sweat, left him “pretty sick” by the end.
“It was a very emotional shoot, and taxing in that way, but also very physically taxing,” he said.
I Play Rocky is produced by Toby Emmerich, Christian Baha, Farrelly, Paul Currie and Michele Weiss. It was runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at Toronto, and screens in Rome’s Grand Public section.
Amazon MGM Studios releases the film in select US cinemas on November 6, and Eagle Pictures opens it in Italy on December 31.
