"Ballers" Star Reveals The One Sport That The Rock Is "Terrible" At, Talks Working With The Rock
WrestlingInc.com owner Raj Giri recently spoke with Donovan Carter, who acts alongside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson on the HBO series Ballers. Carter discussed his experiences working with The Rock, how he got into acting and much more.
The third season of Ballers is currently available for digital download and in August, HBO picked up the series for a fourth season set to premiere in 2018. Carter stars as "Vernon," an NFL football player who The Rock's character, "Spencer," represents as a financial manager. A former college football at UCLA, Carter once had dreams of playing in the NFL before he made the transition into acting. Carter detailed the winding road he took to becoming a star on the small-screen.
"It was a crazy story. God is good, first of all, I give him all the praise and glory. At first, when I got out of football, I really was on that post-trying to figure out what you want to do, you don't really know exactly which way you want to go," Carter said. "I just kept in contact with my coaches because I went to UCLA for my undergrad, so I kept in contact with them. They gave me a person's number, who became a commercial agent. That was how I started at first, doing commercials as an extra. I had done that, and then I got an email through my coaches for a casting call for a show called, Ballers. I then went through the audition, went through the whole process of getting the part, then I got blessed with the part and now we are on season 4."
Carter said he was a wrestling fan growing up and his favorite superstars were The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, Goldberg, D-Generation X and Ric Flair. Carter said he relishes the opportunity to work with one of his childhood heroes and admits he was starstruck when he first met The Rock.
"It was surreal. It was crazy; especially when I first met him and I told him that I used to watch him as a kid; he was one of my heroes so it was great to go from meeting him, to working with him, to being his friend, it's such a blessing," Carter said.
With the third season Ballers being released for digital download this week, Carter looked back on where the show started. He said he's grateful that the series has been able to reach this point and how much he has learned from the experience.
"It was an amazing experience; just being in Miami. I had never been in Florida before; let alone Miami, so to get to go out there and work, and learn about the business," Carter said. "I didn't go to school for acting, I went to acting class now and study, but to be able to learn that way on the job was an amazing experience and meet some cool people. It reminded me of my freshman year in college and fresh out of High School so I just tried to show them everything that I could."
The Rock has become one of the busiest actors in Hollywood over the past year. Carter said he wasn't able to work with him that much over the past season, but he joined the chorus of those who praise how The Rock treats the people he works with. Carter also detailed a funny story dating back to when they were shooting the first episode of the series.
"I didn't get to work with him this season as much as much as previous seasons, but he is really cool and he is a really nice guy and I was just watching his leadership and watching things he does from afar because, the way he treats people is really humbling and you know, good things happen to good people," Carter said. "The funny thing was the first episode we were playing basketball; he is terrible at basketball. He never took one shot, and whenever he would get the ball he would just pass it; I said to myself, oh man, Dwayne doesn't play any basketball. He probably played NBA 2K and that's it."
Peter Bahi contributed to this article.