MovieChat Forums > Borg McEnroe (2018) Discussion > does shia play tennis?

does shia play tennis?

posted 8 years ago by jcallows
4 replies | jump to latest

i think shia will do a good job acting like mcenroe. but it'll be tough to play like him. does shia even play tennis? is he even left handed?

[–] bittersweet_smiler 8 years ago

could Kirsten Dunst & Paul Bettany play tennis? no. did they look convincing in that 2004 Wimbledon movie? not really.
did the movie make back its money anyway? only just.

he doesn't have to know how to play tennis. he just needs to run around a court, make facial expressions, and shout at umpires.

[–] jcallows 8 years ago

since this is more a docu-drama, the actors should know how to play and have a playing style similar to that of the athletes they're pretending to be. the wimbledon movie is purely fictional and less about tennis and more about the relationship between two people so it didn't matter if anybody knew how to play. the backdrop just happened to be tennis.

[–] ashbibleswan 8 years ago

1)Shia & Sverrir both trained for months for the film; 2) They both have stunt doubles who can actually play; 3) From the on set pics, Shia is not left handed, but I guess it'd be fixed with his stunt double or something.

[–] liscarkat (16602) 4 years ago

I saw the movie last night, and Shia (and his double) play left-handed, or at least it's made to look that way by reversing the image or something. That's how it was done when Gary Cooper played Lou Gehrig in "The Pride of the Yankees". The uniforms and background signs were printed backwards, Cooper hit right-handed and ran to third base, then they flipped the image and it looked like he was left-handed.