SPOILER ALERT: This piece discusses the first three episodes of Stick on Apple TV+.
Owen Wilson’s latest project, the Apple TV+ series Stick, watches the actor take on a plucky underdog of sorts — Pryce Cahill — a former professional golfer whose divorce is about to be finalized in the sale of the house he once shared with his ex wife Amber-Linn (Judy Greer).
Now working as a golf club salesman, it’s obvious from the pitch he makes in the opening moments of the series that he still loves the sport of golf. It’s this “positive” energy and that allows Pryce, who stumbles upon golf phenom Santiago Wheeler (Peter Dager) to convince the teenager to take his talents on the road and compete to become a pro golfer. A surrogate father and son relationship develops between the pair, but not without its bumps in the road as Santi sometimes takes big swings without heed for some of Pryce’s advice.
“You don’t know the right way to do it. You have somebody like Joe DiMaggio, I think the first time his dad ever saw him play baseball, he was already a center fielder for the Yankees. His dad was a fisherman. No interest,” Wilson said. “Then you have Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods is not Tiger Woods without his dad putting a club in his hand at age two. So what’s the right way to do it? Is it to stand back and let somebody do it on their own? There isn’t a set way, and there isn’t a foolproof guidebook to how to bring out the best in someone.”
Also along for the ride are Santi’s mother Elena (Mariana Treviño) and his former golf caddy and good friend Mitts (Marc Maron), who supplies the RV they travel in as well as the occasional dose of wisdom — golf and otherwise. On the road, they meet Lilli Kay’s Zero, who rounds out the ensemble, but who also challenges the dynamic that has begun to form between mentor and mentee.
“How much input do you give? When do you hold back? That’s what we see in the show,” creator Jason Keller told Deadline. “We see these individuals, these strangers to one another, start to better understand how to be a family. And with that comes all of these awkward dynamics.”
In the below interview, Wilson and Keller talk what the show’s first three episodes — now streaming on Apple TV+ — tee up for the rest of the series, how the characters balance past and present and what keeps them in Pryce Cahill’s orbit.
DEADLINE: What is it about Pryce Cahill as a character that keeps people coming back and rooting for him, despite some of the more questionable decisions he makes?
WILSON: It might sound superficial, but just the name Pryce Cahill is a routable name. But, of course, the guy has a quality that is nice when you come across it, even in real life, of somebody who is beaten, but still out there selling and trying to believe. I guess that means you haven’t given up if you’re doing that. That’s always nice to be around that kind of energy.
JASON KELLER: Pryce is aspirational. He’s positive, always a positive thinker, and in that way, he’s identifiable to all of us. We’re all sort of broken in places, and hopefully we can have an outlook towards life like Pryce Cahill, does. I would hope that we could.
WILSON: That’s interesting, though, the idea of being broken, and the different ways people respond, because, of course, [Marc Maron’s character] Mitts has responded in one way, and Pryce goes a different way.
I don’t know which is better. I know, in this age of therapy, they say, “Oh, you have to face things.” But then there is something to be said for ignoring and compartmentalizing. I’ve joked about this, that, my friend was saying, “You’ll see those kind of medicines that’ll say the side effects [of] ‘do not operate heavy machinery’ right? ‘Alcohol may intensify this effect.’ But one that my friend had seen that says ‘Can create a false sense of well-being.’
And I’m like, ‘Yeah, what’s the problem with that?’ Like, you could say everything’s a false sense of well being. So if that’s the case, I think Pryce is still taking a swing and back to [the] original thing. Who’s to say you do have to face stuff? But of course, the journey of the show…
KELLER: It makes for better story.
WILSON: [Laughs].
DL: Jason, I did want to ask you more about that, and, Owen feel free to weigh in too, but the balance of like you were saying, compartmentalizing and Grossweiner’s law, and there’s all these themes of don’t think about the past, just move forward, but how did you want to balance that with both Pryce and Santi’s backstories of what has happened to them?
OWEN: Yeah, I think you can do it until all of a sudden you can’t do it anymore. And something just sort of makes you face it. And that’s, of course, what happens in this.
KELLER: I think whether we allow ourselves to admit it or not, we’re all shaped by our pasts. And you can either face your past or ignore it. Either way it’s shaping your present and the way you look, you know, at your future. Both of them have this turbulent past and loss and grief and frustration, and it’s affecting their present day, and they happen to come together at a point when they, you know, can sort of help each other, kind of move into the next chapter of their lives.
WILSON: I’ve been watching this Dale Earnhardt documentary, and he had a very complicated relationship with his father, who was a great racer, and didn’t really encourage him, never gave him that much support, and obviously it’s really driven him. But also, this guy’s makeup, he’s not somebody who’s going to wallow, and you’re not going to see him — there’s different ways to — hi shaped by it, but the way he’s reacting isn’t in this sort of new agey, like, “My gosh, it was [so] painful.”
KELLER: I think when these certain sports, or maybe it’s all sports, but certainly golf, auto racing feels that way — you can’t really get stuck in the past.
WILSON: You’ve gotta compartmentalize.
KELLER: So, I mean, the elite athletes, I mean, I’m sure they do it in their personal life, in the same way they do it on a golf course.
WILSON: And if it’s such a bad thing, why are humans so good at it?
DL: At the end of Episode 3, Santi and Pryce have one of the first big fights of the season, what does that reveal about what they still have to work on, and what does it spell out for the rest of the series?
WILSON: For me, that’s the challenge in real life, that we’re social animals, and we want to connect with people and, but why is it so hard? Well, we put up walls, and there’s, how to reach people? And sometime between men.
I want Santi to be great and feel I have a path for him that he can follow to greatness, but he doesn’t necessarily want to hear it or hear it in the way that I’m going to tell it to him. That’s a big part of being a parent, too. That’s a big part of, with friends, you can see somebody make a mistake, and you sometimes just can’t reach people.
That’s just what makes this relationship complicated and interesting, and why I responded to it when Jason first showed me the scripts and talked about the story, because I can really relate to that, wanting to connect, wanting to help someone. But how do you do it?
KELLER: We always, in this show, were drawing, all of us, Owen, the actors, the writers who wrote this first season, we were always drawing on our personal experiences, on the turbulence we have with friendships or marriages, or any kind of relationship.
We were all wanting to infuse this show with our own personal experiences, and Owen’s right. This is the difficult thing about being a parent. It’s the difficult thing about being a partner to somebody, it’s difficult thing about being a friend to somebody is just wanting to connect and be honest and hope for the best for that person.
The post ‘Stick’ Star Owen Wilson And Creator Jason Keller On Show’s Exploration Of Mentorship And Found Family: “There Isn’t A Foolproof Guidebook To Bring Out The Best In Someone appeared first on Deadline.
