Uncle Drew‘s evolution from fun commercial idea to a full-fledged movie with a wide release is fascinating, as they managed to extract a legitimate story that entertained audiences (Cinemascore: A, Rotten Tomatoes: 66 percent) out of an initial concept that was “what if we made a current basketball player look old so he can mess with people at a park.”
That transformation of making Kyrie Irving into Uncle Drew himself, as well as the rest of the cast of NBA and WNBA legends, is one of the keys to the movie’s comedic element, as watching old people dominate on the basketball court is inherently funny. Blue Whale Studios was the team in charge of aging Irving, Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, Chris Webber, Lisa Leslie, and Nate Robinson into senior citizens for the film, and in doing so, they spent an awful lot of time with the cast.
The makeup process could take up to four hours each day, depending on the person, as they had to layer various prosthetics and do makeup and hair over top. Blue Whate co-founders Matt Silva and Jonah Levy spoke with Uproxx Sports about that daily process, their experience working with Kyrie Irving, and their favorite stories from their time on set with some NBA legends.
Kyrie’s Uncle Drew was obviously a known character, but a lot of the others are new to the Uncle Drew universe if you will. What was the process of coming up with the looks for each of the characters and what were the inspirations behind those?
Jonah: Yeah, so I’ll tell you. This was one of the most exciting and challenging projects at the same time. Part of the thrill of it, honestly, was being able to sit back and talk with Charles, the director, and some of the producers, and just start coming up with some really exciting characters. What we do in the beginning is go into Photoshop, and go into some different design programs, and just start designing characters before we even put clay to a lifecast. That is a really great process because it gives you the initial back and forth, and the initial rapport with the creative team and with the team bringing the film to life.
That’s always a neat part because you’re just kind of creating something from scratch. It’s a really fun process, and for us, some of the cast hadn’t even been locked in yet. We were having to kind of imagine these characters based on the descriptions from Charles, but without knowing who they were.
Matt: One of the first things we had to do, because there weren’t a locked down cast of characters yet. We knew who was written in the script, as far as the characters name and their appearance, their characteristics, a personality. We had like a wishlist of athletes, and that was one of the biggest struggles that we faced through almost up to the first day of filming. It was like, who was going to play that character? When doing these big makeup sets, that’s really difficult because we need as much time to create from scratch their looks.
But, working with Charles Stone, the director, he was so amazing. We sat down and had a creative meeting. We talked about the personalities, the heart of these characters, and then from there we went back to the lab and tried to best project who we thought these people were in their designs. Considering that it’s a comedy, these are supposed to be characters that are memorable. They’re not just old age makeups, they’re a little larger than life. That’s a big part of what propelled us in the different designs.
Jonah: In the past you might have five to six months a year to go through these kind of designs, and come up with really locked in things. You may know your actors already, and in this case, we had six weeks at best, some of them two weeks, from the time they cast them to being their first day on screen, which is insane, but an amazing challenge, which we were really happy to take on.
You don’t run into Shaq-sized people very often. I’m sure sometimes you have people that are cast for large roles, but working with someone his size, and making prosthetics and going through this process with him, and Reggie Miller, and these guys that are much bigger human beings than probably you’d normally run into, what was that experience like, and kind of the unique challenges of doing makeup and doing prosthetics for them?
Matt: That was the first conversation we had that really broached was with people of this size and stature, you can’t do that because what’s a normal sized prosthetic for anybody else is like a little kid’s to them. It really did have to all be custom made, and that was just one more challenge. Custom made, and not only that but execution to working with their particular size, it just really elevates the cost of everything. So, we work on a tight timeline, and working on a tight budget, and you got people who are much larger than life. It was a really exciting challenge to take on.
Jonah: I think also to add to that, it’s like when you have an opportunity like this, which more and more in today’s film making, it just doesn’t come around that often. You don’t have films that are character driven with people in character makeups from beginning to end. It starts putting you in this kind of path of the movies like Dick Tracy, or Nutty Professor, and so when you have that opportunity, you also want to make sure you’re giving it your all, and you’re doing justice to what these characters can be. Then, you top it off with they’re athletes, and they’re ginormous athletes. I mean, Shaquille O’Neal, it’s crazy how huge he is. Not only in his stature but also in his personality.
You have that challenge and you can either be withdrawn and kind of afraid, or you just embrace it. You’re like, if I’m gonna do this, we got to go all in and do something that is not only challenging and memorable for us, but hopefully for the audience sees it as well. That passion we have to create something memorable reads through on film, and that these characters come to life because they aren’t just something that you might have that’s a generic piece, as Matt was saying. It certainly did take a lot of thinking and engineering, and figuring out just the amount of materials that would be needed to make something like this work.
We all obviously get to see the finished product on screen, but what is the process like on a day-to-day basis of getting these guys into all their prosthetics, and their makeup, and their wigs, and everything like that? I know it’s a laborious process, but can you kind of walk us through how long it kind of takes to get all these guys in, when you are talking about every day they have to be in this full look?
Jonah: So typically, we come in probably about 45 minutes to an hour before the athlete arrives to make sure everything is prepared. I’ve got to say this, first and foremost, every athlete that they cast who we worked with was so respectful of our time and professional. I mean, Kyrie was in early every single day. He sat in the chair. He didn’t have a crew come in with him. He wasn’t getting up every two seconds to answer a call. He sat and he came prepared. That was something we found across the board. That’s how everybody came in. Respectful of the process. It really made it easy.
The bigger makeups started as sometimes four, four and half hour makeups. Putting intricate prosthetic pieces on, they don’t just go on like a mask, they go on as almost like individual puzzle pieces. A nose tip, a cheek, an eye bag, a forehead, a neck, earlobes, back of hand pieces, and all of these take a lot of time to not only put on and blend, but then you also have to apply makeup to blend them into their own skin, apply beards and hair work. It’s a very arduous process, and when you consider that they’re in these makeups every single day they’re filming, it’s a lot of time.
We did our best to often bring down the time. Some of the makeups have started as four, four and half hour makeups, we were able to get down to maybe three hours, which is a big chunk of time not only for the athletes, but then also for the shooting schedule.
Matt: Each character had a different amount of prosthetics on and a different range. Shaq was not really able to commit to as many days on the shoot, and his schedule was a lot more limited, so we had to make sure that the amount of pieces we put on him were quick. We couldn’t do something maybe too extensive, plus it’s Shaq. You can’t hide him, so he had some of the least amount of prosthetics. That’s why we made the conscious decision to go a little crazy with his hair. Because he’s so stoic, but so intense as a person with stature and personality, we wanted to give him almost this jarring look, which it’s been great to see the response online. Somebody started calling him black Wolverine. It’s like one of the funniest things that we’ve read.
We then tip the opposite side of the scale where Chris Webber has the most prosthetics. He has between 11 and 14 prosthetics on. He was the one who was most willing to get into the character, probably next to Kyrie, as far as like the makeup was the character to them. Reggie’s also very limited. Chris and Kyrie were behind working with the makeup as the character, so we were able to do so much. Their makeups were a lot more extensive, a lot longer, and a lot more taxing to wear.
Shout out for Kyrie and Chris for going through all of that, especially Chris had some skin issues through the shoot. His skin was sensitive to the prosthetics, and he toughed through it, man. He made it work through hell and high water.
Jonah: I think we should mention Lisa, too. She was great as well. And to add to that, it’s not an easy thing to be in prosthetics for one or two days, but when you’re in them back-to-back-to-back-to-back, and then you’re also having to play basketball in the Atlanta heat, the fact that they all kept their temperaments so clean and straight made it really easy for us to do our jobs under pretty challenging circumstances. I mean, prosthetics on one, or two, or three days is already tough. Then, you put somebody out in the heat, it’s tough. Now, you have somebody on a regular basis, on a daily basis, it’s a big challenge. Matt and I talk about it a lot. We just can’t imagine it going much better than it did, under all of the challenges that were there.
You mentioned Kyrie being really into making the character work, and that sort of thing. What was that experience of working with him? This is obviously his first film shoot. He’s done the commercials in the past, and has seemingly like really kind of dived into this character. What was he like in talking and working with him? Obviously when you have him in the chair for three hours, I’m sure you get a chance to kind of talk to him, and he’s an interesting guy. What was it like interacting with Kyrie on a day-to-day basis?
Jonah: Kyrie was … and it’s not lip service. Kyrie was amazing. Dave and I did his makeup every day. Like I said, Kyrie was so professional, and so respectful, and on time every day, sitting in the chair, respecting the process, respecting us. He’s a really intelligent guy. Just being able to not only work with somebody of his caliber in his profession, but also just to sit and have meaningful conversation, not just superficial chitchat. You’re working with somebody for months at a time, and you’re in their face every day. It really makes the process that much more enjoyable. I can say … I mean, we became pretty close, throughout. It’s not always when you work with somebody, and you’re sharing numbers at the end and you text back and forth. Last week I was texting back and forth with him. That’s just one of those things that is also a rarity. I really have a great admiration and respect for him.
I told him, I grew up watching basketball. I grew up in ’84 when Jordan came in the league. Like, he was the guy I went to, and then I kind of fell out of basketball. I told him that watching him on court, getting to know him, kind of sparked my love for basketball again. It was pretty cool, from a personal level too. I have nothing but positive things to say about Kyrie because he really … things trickled down from the top, and he absolutely set the tone for the level of professionalism. Somebody who comes to work, ready to work, and not only respects the process but respects everybody else around him. It wasn’t the Kyrie show. It was Kyrie is part of the team to make something like this work, and that really gets my deepest respect.
Matt: I just wanted to add real quick. I mean, on that note, sort of the idea a lot of people might have, going into the movie is that this is gonna be the Kyrie show, but it’s really not. This is a movie about Uncle Drew geting his squad back together. It’s really like your introduction into meeting these people that are a part of Drew’s life, and have been gone for a while. It was so interesting that in real life, Kyrie really was like Uncle Drew. He was the glue that held the team together. It’s like, in the movie, you’re gonna meet Uncle Drew and really get to know him, but he’s like the straight man through the whole thing that holds everything together. Then, we’re spending all this time getting to know all these other characters. It’s really cool that Kyrie sort of embodies that into life with the other athletes.
He was obviously going through a very interesting time in his professional and personal life, because he famously was going through the trade thing while he was on set, and he found out he got traded while on set. Did he ever talk about that, or was that just kind of, he kept that in its own little compartment, and he was just focused on the film? Did you get to talk to him about kind of his mindset in going through that at all?
Jonah: I obviously don’t want to kind of cross the line of his privacy. He kept things pretty quiet. He did mention some things that were obviously kind of kept between us, and that’s all I think I feel comfortable saying with him, to respect him. I can certainly tell you that when he found out, man, the excitement that overtook him when he got the news was pretty palpable. It was a pretty neat feeling to watch that energy get to be released when he got the news. We were there when he got the news.
Shaq is a legendary prankster, and just general larger than life personality, where like Reggie Miller kind of similarly. They’re all very interesting and kind of funny guys. Do you have any fun stories that you’d be able to share about just generally interacting with those guys, and what those guys were like on set?
Matt: Totally. I mean, for starters, just Reggie Miller, who’s sort of unsuspecting because I think Reggie was — other than Kyrie — one of the only people to come in really early, always be there, in and out, super, super professional. Like us, it’s not his first time working with a film crew. Some of these other guys, they haven’t really done maybe as much as Shaq has. Reggie is pretty unsuspecting. He’s a hilarious guy.
We were sort of designing his makeup after we had done the first test, and we were just sort of spit balling, and I was like, “You know what would be hilarious is if Lights had a gold tooth.” He was so down for it, and he was so willing to just like … well, then the director didn’t know. We were just basically going to surprise the director. So, we ran to the convenience store, bought a pack of Rolo’s, took the gold foil out, and glued it to his tooth. I took him up to set and all he did the whole day was just pop around and smile at people, like flashing this gold tooth. Because of that day, we got the director to approve to actually had a gold tooth made for him and have it through the whole movie. It was pretty cool.
Jonah: Shaquille O’Neal is … I mean, everything about him is larger than life. We flew into Orlando to take his lifecast, and man, everything about that lifecast … I’m not going to get into all the details, but everything about it was just crazy. Shaq and I ended up becoming kind of like the rib each other guys, sometimes on set. We joked with each other, a lot. Shaq’s one of those guys, to me, he’s like the big teddy bear, right? He kind of could come across a little, in the beginning … I think he purposely uses his size as intimidation, but if you stand up to it, and you push back, and you play back with him, man, he just opens wide up. That’s kind of how it was.
Matt: His sense of humor is just so dry that if you’re not aware that he’s joking with you, you might take it seriously.
Jonah: Right, because he’s a monster. He’s a huge man. When you play back with him, I mean, it’s hilarious. He and I had this kind of thing going where we would kind of a little bit of trash talk each other throughout the run, and it made it really fun. It just kept things light. You need that when you’re working as hard as they are, as hard as we are. You need that kind of lightness to keep spirits up. It certainly was that way. Shaq was a big reason for that.
Matt: Right, and it was funny because Shaq would do everything he could to give us a hard time. He’s kind of like a big brother, in that sense. He convinced a large part of the crew to call me “Makeup Jesus” one day, because I’ve got long brown hair and a beard. I had the distinct pleasure of getting him back one day when he was sitting on the sideline. He wasn’t in the shot, and so I just walked up behind him and just whispered in his ear, “I know you’re not in the shot, but you have Makeup Jesus’s blessing.” It’s the only time I literally got him to bust out laughing. He’s wearing this facial hair piece, so he can’t move his mouth a ton, so he’s like trying not to laugh and laughing bent over at the same time. It was pretty hilarious.
