Christopher V. Nelson joins Mike and Tommy to talk about how he was in four episodes of Mighty Ducks: Game Changers but only had one word of dialogue. He then discusses his involvement in the original Mighty Ducks trilogy, how he became the hockey guy for film and TV, and how he feels about the hockey seasons in Season 2 of Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, and more.
Highlights from Christopher V. Nelson’s interview
Thanks to Chris for coming on. Follow him on Instagram: @christopher_v_nelson. A full list of credits can be seen on his IMDB. Before getting into acting and advising he had a long career as a hockey player. He played for the University of Wisconsin and was a fifth-round pick of the New Jersey Devils. He never made the NHL, but played seven years in the minor leagues.
Getting into Acting
He got into acting through his former coach and friend of the podcast, Jack White, who was the hockey technical advisor for the three original Mighty Ducks films.
“When I got out of the pros for the most part, I came back to L.A.,” Nelson said. “Jack called me and he said, ‘Hey, I’m doing a TV show, do you want to participate in it? … At about 7:45, I got a knock on my door, ‘Mr. Nelson we need you on set.’
“I open my trailer door and there is 80 of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. The first major thing I did was Baywatch.”
Getting on a Nike campaign
Chris told a story about getting passed over for a Nike commercial and it all coming full circle and being cast in Nike’s “What If” commercial as Michael Vick’s skating double. Here is that commercial:
Christopher V. Nelson’s job in the original Mighty Ducks trilogy
Chris would demonstrate all the drills for the actors and doubles to do.
“I would do all these drills and then these drills, they would pop up,” Nelson said. “There’s so much stuff you see in the montage sequences of Mighty Ducks 1, 2, and 3.”
Chris also worked on Good Burger with Kenan and Kel. He was in charge of the roller skating scene at the beginning of the movie.
Chris’s list of the best skaters on the set of Mighty Ducks: Game Changers
“Brady Noon was the best one,” Nelson said. “Josh Duhamel came second. Then you’ve got Taegen (Burns) and Sway (Bhatia) and DJ (Watts), Maxwell (Simkins) and Luke (Islam) and it all trickled down from there. The only person who didn’t skate was Lauren Graham.
“We were going to put her in skates and they changed the scene up a little bit — I think it was Episode 7 — and we didn’t write it in.”
On shooting the Ice Breaker scene
Chris talked about how show runner Josh Goldsmith wrote the Ice Breaker hockey scene for maximum carnage and how it was difficult to do in the midst of the pandemic. It also might’ve worked a little too well.
“It was so chaotic that after we shot the first day Disney came down and was like, ‘What is going on right now?’ Because they saw the dailies,” Nelson said. “I’m like, he wanted carnage. You got carnage.”
Nelson spoke a lot about how he had to let some things to go, even though they weren’t realistic. Listen to the full episode for all of his insights, especially a great story about how his professional roller hockey coach benched him because of an audition.
The Quack Question
Thanks to bberg19 for the #QuackQuestions:
Jace’s glitch shot
Chris talked about the difficulties of Jace’s glitch shot, and how they looked at Charles Barkley’s golf swing to get it down:
Credits
Executive producers: Elsie Barnett, Bryan Berg, Alex Ybarra, Josh Luecht, Bobby Lemaire, Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, Aaron Davis, Ed Scimia, Alex Vlahos, Joyce Eng, Matt Holtwick, Nurul Azam and Alexander Gray.
Producers: Deborah Chen, Jeremiah Bersche, Adam Ferry, Jarrod Beasley, Lisa Wobig, Anthony Gioffre, Jeff Fantus, Stevie Yanks, J.D. Youngblood, Chris Garland, Sarah Mihalopoulos, Dave Dang, Wayne Perkins, Matt Hoover, Joshua Pellowski, Uche Egbuchulam and Mary Yang.
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