2 l April
11 - 17, 2021
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY GEORGE DICKIE
“Big Shot” begins
streaming Friday
on Disney+.
A ‘Big Shot’ gets a little attitude
adjustment in Disney+ dramedy
A driven college basketball coach gets a lesson in humanity when he’s forced to head up a girls high-
school team in a comedy/drama series upcoming on Disney+.
In “Big Shot,” premiering Friday, April 16, John Stamos (“Fuller House,” “ER”) is cast in the role
of Marvyn Korn, whose quick temper got him ousted as coach of Wisconsin’s men’s hoops team after
he threw a chair at a referee. To salvage his career and professional reputation, he takes a job at The
Westbrook School for Girls, an elite private institution and a far cry from his days in the Big 10. But
the gig also offers him the opportunity to step out of his comfort zone, re-examine his priorities and
make changes for the better as he learns to work with a different kind of athlete – and they with him.
Created by David E. Kelley (“Big Little Lies,” “The Undoing”), Dean Lorey (“iZombie,” “Harley
Quinn”) and Brad Garrett, the series also stars Jessalyn Gilsig (“Glee”) as assistant coach Holly Barrett
and Yvette Nicole Brown (“Community) as school headmaster Sherilyn Thomas.
For Stamos, “Big Shot” entailed a major learning curve as he readily admits his lack of basketball
knowledge coming in was almost comical.
“I sort of panicked when I heard it was about basketball,” he explains, “but I dug into that part of it
as much as I could. I went to a rehearsal with (Los Angeles Lakers great) Jerry West. I guess they call
it a practice, but I called it a rehearsal, and ... that was the first moment he gave me a dirty look. And
then I thought that his team ... (was) the Clippers. I thought they were a college team, and that didn’t
go over well.
“But I really took it as a challenge, honestly,” he continues, “because it was just such a character that
I’ve never played and it was the first character that I’ve been offered that everybody is talking about
him like how unlikable he is and what a crab he is and he’s not a nice person. So I dug into that.”
As it evolves, the relationship between Marvyn and his new players becomes symbiotic – he learns
to treat them as more than X’s and O’s and they get a lesson in professionalism and taking themselves
seriously. For Lorey, this is a fish-out-of-water story about second chances.
“Even though it’s a basketball-themed show, we wanted to make it very character-driven,” Lorey
explains,“ and we wanted to make sure that we never showed a basketball game that wasn’t advancing
some sort of major character story or something like that ... . So we’ve tried to make it really character-
driven, and we try to find a nice balance between drama and comedy on the show as well. My
background is primarily comedy, and so between David and I, I think we’ve found a nice balance.”
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