After a recent test screening of I Play Rocky, audience members had a question. How often had director Peter Farrelly interspersed footage from the original 1976 Rocky with new scenes in this film? It was hard, someone said, to tell when you were watching Sylvester Stallone and when it was the actor portraying him, Anthony Ippolito, in the biographical drama. The answer: It’s all new.
None of the original film was used here. But for Farrelly, it wasn’t just a great compliment — it meant the movie had done exactly what he and the cast had set out to do.
I Play Rocky, playing in the U.S. from November 6, retells the story of Stallone’s struggle to get Rocky made while also fighting to play the lead. He turned down huge sums of money for the screenplay alone (the offers kept increasing, up to a stunning $360,000), but it didn’t matter to Stallone. He had to play Rocky.
“We’re living in a time when everybody does things for money,” Farrelly says. “What he did was really incredible.”
Claire Folger
There’s a lot to the behind-the-scenes drama of Rocky that viewers may find hard to believe, but as Farrelly notes, “It’s all true. This is what actually happened.”
“It’s going to be really eye-opening for people to see how semi-autobiographical the Rocky film was,” Ippolito says. “A lot of people don’t even know that Stallone wrote [the 1976 movie]. Stallone is somebody who’s been almost misjudged. He’s actually an incredible writer, and hopefully this is going to bring that to light as well.”
Farrelly loved the script for I Play Rocky and immediately wanted to make it, though he assumed it would be tough to find a lead able to portray Stallone convincingly. It wasn’t. When Ippolito auditioned for the part, he was a natural to fill Stallone’s boxing shoes. Still, though Farrelly had seen Ippolito in the 2022 Paramount+ miniseries The Offer and been blow away by his performance, as Ippolito notes, “I didn’t have to change my body for that role.”
To take on portraying Stallone, he would have to undergo a huge transformation, which meant extensive workouts and adding about 40 pounds to his frame. He began training at Brooklyn’s famed Gleason’s Gym, a favorite of boxers like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson and where, among others, Robert De Niro trained for Raging Bull and Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby.
Claire Folger / Amazon MGM Studios / Everett Collection
Ippolito stayed in a hotel nearby and had no kitchen or microwave, which prompted him to re-create one of the most famous training scenes in Rocky: “I was on this ridiculous diet where I was trying to get all these grams of protein every day,” he says. “And so I thought, if there was ever a time to do the raw-egg thing, it would be now.” He adds with a laugh, “It didn’t go down well. Never again.”
The pain of training was worth it in the end to fully embody the character of Stallone. “He built a physique. That was a part of who he was and what he weaponized in making the character of Rocky,” Ippolito says. “It’s one of the reasons he’s perfect for the role.”
That wasn’t all, though. Beyond the killer workouts he had to endure, the young actor had another aspect of Stallone to nail: that unmistakable voice.
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
“Peter Farrelly and I talked about how important his voice was,” Ippolito says of getting into character to play the Italian Stallion. “Part of what shapes the man is he has this voice, and he has these things that were difficult to overcome. His voice was a by-product of facial paralysis [in] the motor nerves on the left side of his face [accidentally caused during his birth]. It created a deeper voice and a bit of a slur.”
I Play Rocky tells the entire story of Stallone’s struggle in the years before making Rocky, all the way through completing the film that would become the biggest movie of 1976. “At the beginning, he’s homeless and selling his dog,” Farrelly notes.
From the beginning, all the odds were stacked against him, but the writer and actor thrived. When producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff (played by P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell in the film) agreed to let Stallone star, he and director John G. Avildsen (Jay Duplass) were given just $1 million and 30 days to complete the project.
“They wanted Stallone to drop out so bad,” Farrelly notes. “If [production] fell behind one day, he was out.” They didn’t fall behind, and in fact, shooting only took 28 days — plus a few cracked ribs and smashed knuckles. And unlike the original movie, this story ends in triumph: “Rocky doesn’t win in the end,” Farrelly says. “Rocky survives, but this guy wins. [His movie] wins the Oscar.”
Claire Folger
Someone who played a huge role in Stallone’s, and Rocky’s, success is Sasha Czack, who became Stallone’s first wife in 1974. She’s portrayed by AnnaSophia Robb (Grosse Pointe Garden Society), who was drawn to the story’s inspiring message of finding the people who believe in you and your dreams.
“Sasha was like a bright light,” Robb says. “She was someone he could rely on for support and encouragement. And she became the movie’s photographer, documenting everything that was happening.” Robb adds, “It’s so important to have that person in your life that you can lean on.”
Rounding out the movie’s cast: Stephan James (War Machine) plays Carl Weathers/Apollo Creed, veteran character actor Robert Morgan is Burgess Meredith/Mickey Goldmill and Matt Dillon plays Stallone’s father Frank, with whom Stallone had a complicated relationship.
Much of the filming took place in Philadelphia. And while they were there, one scene from the original would have to be re-created: the run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
“I was in the Rocky sweats, and it’s really hard to explain just how incredible and surreal that was,” Ippolito notes with a smile, reflecting on what that particular scene meant in the context of all that Stallone went through making this movie. “Rocky‘s an underdog story, and this is very much one as well,” Ippolito says. “These are the things he had to deal with that made him such
an underdog.”
“What Sylvester Stallone did was so impressive,” Farrelly notes. “Rocky started a genre. We didn’t have movies like that at that time. There were a lot of dark movies back then. It really broke the mold.”
“This film will inspire people,” Robb adds. “It should give filmmakers hope that they can succeed. And even beyond that, everyone can relate to the message of following your dreams.”
“Everybody knows that this is not a very easy industry to succeed in or get work in,” Ippolito notes. “And that’s why I hope this story resonates with people who have creative aspirations and ideas that they want to push forward. And belief in themselves. Because that’s what this is about at its core. And it’s what Rocky is about at its core too.”
I Play Rocky, In Theaters November 6
TV Guide Magazine’s Rocky 50th Anniversary Special Issue is available for order online now at Rocky.TVBooks.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.