Mark Tallman is known for appearing in popular shows like Damages, State of Affairs, and First Wives Club, but his latest role as Nick Brandes in Your Friends & Neighbors sees him parlay an impressive sporting background in order to bring authenticity to a charismatic character.
M&F sat down with the athlete-turned-actor to find out how the man from El Paso, TX, likes to train, and we couldn’t resist getting the details behind “that” seriously memorable basketball scene too.
Living up to his name, the 6’3” Tallman towers over most Hollywood stars. In Your Friends & Neighbors, his character, Nick, is a former NBA standout who is now retired and living in an affluent community—juggling his “Strong Ass Gym” with other hilarious entrepreneurial efforts, like a space-age toilet that he hopes will take off just like the George Foreman Grill.
“The smart toilet is something else,” says Tallman of the audience’s reaction. “People love it.”
But along with the comedy comes some serious rivalry. In the show, Tallman’s character has recently broken a friendship code and taken the wife of his buddy, leaving John Hamm’s character, Andrew Cooper, out in the cold.
Casting the role would prove difficult because Tallman’s character had to be believable as a confident former athlete while still being likeable despite hooking up with his pal’s partner, played by Amanda Peet. With just a month to prepare, Tallman soon learned that the backstory to his character would require genuine fitness photoshoots for mock magazine covers, along with scenes showing him in the throes of swimming, basketball, and tennis.
While the tennis technique required some coaching, the actor tells M&F that he was all-in when it came to that memorable basketball scene in episode 3 which resulted in a friendly (but intoxicated) game going south — after his opponent got a gnarly broken leg for his efforts.
Mark Tallman Breaks Down His Memorable Basketball Scene in “Your Friends & Neighbors”
Following the graphic leg break, the scene called for Tallman to continue play while being interviewed by the police.
“Well, it did take a long time to shoot” he shares. “Particularly because of the stunt involved, for someone’s leg to break. But the basketball part, hey man, I’m gonna toot my own horn,” beams Tallman. “I’m being interviewed by the detective and shooting while acting. At the start of the scene, I think I say something like ‘I hope you don’t mind if I keep getting my shots in.’ I had to shoot throughout that entire scene and in most cases with TV or film, they’ll superimpose cut shots where the actor’s shooting, and then they just show a ball going in.”
But there was more to the shot than meets the eye. “But if you look closely, they were intentional about putting some full, wide shots in there because I was making them shots. Me and (Jonathan) Tropper, our creator, were going back and forth, and he said he was going to put some money on my percentage of shooting.”
With Tropper taunting Tallman and telling him not to “choke,” the athlete-turned-actor rose to the challenge. Of course, the big man wasn’t about to miss a chance to compete. Tallman’s sporting pedigree includes being a former Division I football player who earned All-Star honors in high school in three sports: football, basketball, and baseball.
Mark Tallman Still Loves To Train
“I try to keep it simple,” explains the actor of his attitude to staying in shape. “I mean, I feel like the more complicated you get, the less motivated you are to do the work.”
To avoid injury as he matures, Tallman says he works on his mobility as well as his muscle. The star says that several of his friends who retired as athletes have suffered with torn Achilles in the past, so he makes sure to strengthen that area with moves like bent knee calf Raises. In terms of pumping iron, the actor still loves to sweat it out in the gym, however. “I try to incorporate two push movements and two pull movements,” he explains. “Say a bench press and an overhead shoulder press (for push day) and then on the flip side either pullups or lat pulldowns, and some sort of row, whether it’s an upright row or bent (over) row.”
Tallman tells M&F that he generally opts for three sets of 10 reps per exercise, but when he’s trying to get lean for a specific task, he will increase the volume to four sets of 15-16 reps, “Where it’s just burnout type of stuff,” he notes.
With Your Friends & Neighbors proving to be a massive hit, Tallman has already been picked for Season 2, meaning that he’s found comradery in a solid acting team, just like the bonds he enjoyed in the world of sports. While Tallman once looked to his athletic coaches to improve his game, he now has some highly experienced acting mentors, like the show’s executive producer, John Hamm.
“I mean, he’s a phenomenal actor,” says Tallman.” We all know that, so I already looked up to him from a work standpoint, but it’s been really, really cool to observe the way he carries himself not only as an actor, (but) because he is just what you would hope he’d be. He’s a pros pro.”
