Long before his new movie tackled one of the NFL’s great underdog stories, actor Zachary Levi was moved by Kurt Warner’s journey.
Warner’s improbable ascent from grocery store employee to a Super Bowl MVP is the subject of the new sports drama “American Underdog,” which stars Levi as the Hall of Fame quarterback.
“I love any true-life sports Cinderella story, and this one is one for the ages,” Levi told the Daily News. “I saw it happening in real time back in ‘99 and was so blown away and inspired by it. Then I got the offer and I read the script, and there was just so much more.”
Coming out in theaters Friday, “American Underdog” begins during Warner’s lone season as a starter at the University of Northern Iowa and follows his struggles to make it with an NFL team before joining the Arena Football League.
“The hard part of making this movie is that a lot of people do know the story,” Warner said. “You can look it up. It’s been chronicled. People have talked about it.”
He ultimately signed with the St. Louis Rams ahead of the 1998 NFL season and became their starter the following year, throwing 41 touchdown passes as the leader of a high-powered offense nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Turf.”
“That’s going to be the backdrop for the movie,” Warner said. “But what they’re really going to see is the story behind that. The story that helped me to get to that point, to become the player and the person that I was at that point.”
The film depicts Warner’s relationship with his wife, Brenda, who was a single mother of two when they met. It also shows the financial struggles the couple faced early in their relationship, which caused Warner to take a job stocking shelves at a Hy-Vee supermarket in Iowa before his football success.
“We kind of have a family of underdogs,” Warner, 50, said. “My wife was on her own journey, an underdog journey. We’ve got a son that was injured when he was young. The movie kind of weaves all of those stories together to be able to touch audiences where they’re at, to connect with them in different ways, all with that mindset of never let your circumstances define you.”
Levi, who also stars as the title superhero in DC Comics’ “Shazam” movies, didn’t have a football background before taking on the lead role in “American Underdog.”
The actor spoke with Warner before and throughout production of the movie, seeking pointers for his portrayal of the quarterback.
“I was given this two-month crash-course quarterback camp. I had a great coach named Clint Dolezel who played against Kurt in the arena league,” Levi, 41, said.
“I also got to toss around with Kurt a lot, too, so they were always helping me on my mechanics and stuff. And then also just diving into what it means and the psychology in the head of a quarterback. Leading your team at the huddle, under center, reading your receivers and the coverage, and trying not to telegraph to the defenders which receiver you’re going to be throwing to.”
Warner passed for 32,344 yards and 208 touchdowns during his 12-year NFL career, which included a Super Bowl championship with the Rams in the 1999 season. Warner played in two subsequent Super Bowls with the Rams and Arizona Cardinals. He joined the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
He says he’s proud of his role in reshaping multiple franchises as a player, and believes the hardships he faced helped prepare him for the NFL.
“Once you get to the other side, you say, ‘Man, I’m so grateful of all the things that I’ve learned and all the ways that I grew before I got to the NFL,’ so when I got there, I was so ready to handle what would come,” Warner said.
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