Dermot Mulroney Reveals What Makes Shooting Stars Different From Other Sports Movies (Exclusive)

The greatest basketball player of all time’s origin story has been brought to live-action life. Peacock’s Shooting Stars tells the tale of LeBron James’s high school basketball team, St. Vincent-St. Mary Fighting Irish, putting an even greater spotlight on the surrounding Fab Five in the process. Caleb McLaughlin’s Lil Dru is positioned as the crew’s leader while AJ Wills Jr.’s Willie McGee seems to be the standout talent in the first act. Off the court, Shooting Stars gives depth to characters like Dermot Mulroney’s Keith Dambrot, a former NCAA coach who finds himself leading this generational squad of high school ballers.

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Mulroney noted that while he did not get to meet Dambrot himself, as he is currently coaching at Duquesne University, he was able to pull almost all of his reference points from archived footage.

“It’s rare that I played a character where there’s good YouTube footage of him,” Mulroney explained. “I made a lot of use of a little deep dive on some of Dambrot’s game and training sessions and stuff like that I was able to see. I did my best to try and bring some of his characteristic physicality to the role. I think you see bits of it in the film for sure.”

Full-length games and interview clips from this era were at the cast’s disposal, but aspects like one-on-one conversations and team dinners were moments that could only be described from word of mouth. Mulroney added that creating those scenes was not an issue due to the Shooting Stars script already being so in-depth.

“Even the script itself had such a strong connection to the community that the story takes place in,” Mulroney said. “The production insisted on shooting it in Akron and in around Cleveland, Ohio, so that brought another level of authenticity and connection to the original story because the people there were actually shooting in the high schools these games took place in. They remember this storyline like it was yesterday, of course. It was an incredible experience to add the human factor from the community into the making of this movie. There’s no AI in those [arena] stands or anything. It became a communal event making this movie.”

Just as some of the extras in the stands for those recreated STVM games were doing their first acting work, Shooting Stars represented a couple of the leading stars’ feature film debuts. Mulroney gave praise to the movie’s inexperienced cast by recalling some of the immense pressure that was put on them.

“I overheard one day, ‘Do you know who’s going to watch this movie? Every athlete in America’s going to watch this movie. Michael Jordan’s going to watch this movie. Charles Barkley’s going to watch this,’” Mulroney recalled. “They were using tough methods to make these guys take their job seriously, which, obviously they were doing, but toe the line and be achievers. It was amazing to watch them being coached and directed simultaneously.”

Coaching and directing these child actors to excel on both the court and in conversation scenes was crucial to Shooting Stars‘ success because as Mulroney mentions, this film’s structure is unlike that of a traditional movie.

“Chris Robinson, the director, said something so interesting. He says, ‘There’s no evil in this movie. There’s no bad guy. There’s no crisis.’ Usually that’s what movies are made on or pumped up for, this big action, this or that,” Mulroney said. “But instead, this one just so beautifully captures the spirit of friendship and brotherhood and teamwork and family in a way that is so beautiful. Of course, the sport photography, they’ve never done this before. No one’s ever made a movie with players this good in a narrative film with them also acting the role.”

Shooting Stars is now streaming on Peacock.