In Apple TV+’s new sports dramedy Stick Peter Dager portrays young golf prodigy Santiago “Santi” Wheeler, who gets recruited to take a swing at becoming a pro golfer by Owen Wilson’s Pryce Cahill, who was himself, once, a pro golfer.
Clashing over their difference in ages and ideas of how to be a good golfer, with Santi sometimes foregoing Pryce’s advise to be a hotshot and take big swings, Dager traced the underlying appreciation the two have for each other — much like a father and son dynamic — despite the ups and downs of their relationship.
“Santi and Pryce, they’re butting heads so much in the beginning because they both have a lot of good reasons to not want to join forces,” Peter Dager told Deadline ahead of the launch of the series — which premiered with the first three episodes arriving on the streamer June 4. “It was nice to feel the secret love that Santi and Pryce have for each other in the beginning of the show, which we see later on a lot more through all those trials and tribulations. But in the beginning, it’s there. That seed is there.”
After some ups and downs in the first couple of episodes, Santi starts to hit his stride competing at the Sparkling Meadows Championship Tournament, he gets a bit cocky and messes up a shot, which, viewers learn, sends him into a spiral about his game on the course. The tension that follows after Pryce scolds Santi in the style of his father, who is not in Santi’s life anymore, ends the third episode on a note of conflict. Add the introduction of Lilli Kay’s Zero, who immediately understands Santi’s situation, and viewers will be wanting to know what happens next in the golf show, which also stars Marc Maron and Mariana Treviño.
“For Zero, Santi’s emotional landscape and where he’s at are really relatable to Zero. I think they’ve been in those positions where, they felt like the odds were stacked against them, or people were against them, and they had to sort of advocate for themselves and stand up for themselves,” Kay shared in the same interview.
Below, the duo discuss first getting into character for the comedy series, what makes their characters click almost instantly and what is in store after the first three episodes.
DEADLINE: Peter, Did you take golf lessons or train for the show? What was that like?
PETER DAGER: I took lessons, and I started as soon as I got the job. I wanted to dive into the whole world and start practicing my own swing and finding it. I started in New York. We looked at a couple of people in New York and we landed on Beau Lardner. Shout out, Beau. He was amazing, and Lily also took a class with him. He was great, we worked together for about a month and a half. I saw some other instructors here and there too in New York, just to get second opinions. But Beau was the person I was coming to pretty consistently.
Then I got to Vancouver, and we had two weeks. I was there, two weeks before I shot anything, and I got to meet Nathan [Leonhardt], who was the golf coordinator. By then I had already, I already had the movements of the swing. I was feeling good, but the main thing Nate got me working on was that inside out and the tucking in that elbow, rather than the elbow being out and coming in over my shoulder. I needed to really work on that inside out. And that’s what Nathan really helped me do. After practicing that for about two weeks, I started feeling really good and confident in the swing, but [it took] a lot of training to get to that point where I felt confident.
DEADLINE: Lilli, one of the first scenes where we meet Zero, she stands up for herself. It’s really impressive to watch. What did you want to get across in that scene as a first impression for viewers?
LILLI KAY: The cool thing about Zero throughout, and that you sort of get right off the bat is, that she’s very uncompromising in her values. If Zero believes something, they believe it with their whole heart, and they stand on that ground. With this situation, from the jump, they’re going, “This is messed up. I’m not here for this. I put up with this. You’re taking the wrong side. I’m out.” And that’s sort of how they are. That opens up in large part because of Santi.
DAGER: You’re welcome.
KAY: [Laughs]. That unyielding, unwillingness to compromise. I think that Zero becomes a little more flexible and a little more understanding.
DAGER: So does Santi, because of Zero.
DEADLINE: For both of you, what makes them immediately get each other when they cross paths?
DAGER: Honestly, that moment is Zero’s scene. It’s a moment where you get to meet zero and immediately say, “Wow, this person is very intelligent” because she sees Santi going through something, and Santi can’t express it, and yet Zero sees it immediately.
I mean I’ll tell Zero a little bit about what’s happening in my life, and immediately, Zero seems to put the puzzles together, and that allows Santi to be seen, but it’s Zero’s observation that really catapults the need for Santi to even want Zero around consistently, and then Zero showing up for Santi in a genuine way throughout the rest of the round in Episode 3, and him hitting a good shot, and then looking at them, and then on another hole, hitting another good shot, and seeing that she’s there. I think it’s your [Lilli] statement that makes me be like, I want to go there, because you’re just so solid in the beginning, when we meet you. It’s such a strong sort of entrance into Santis life and into the show.
KAY:. It’s an exciting thing to be able to cheer somebody on in that journey. So before, beyond the immediate sort of, ‘Oh, we kind of click,’ that’s an exciting thing.
DAGER: They meet in such an honest…
KAY: Crazy moment for both of them.
DAGER: He’s walking by and he hits something, and she’s like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey!’ So they can’t really hide.
KAY: Super vulnerable moment.
DAGER: They’re meeting already in such an honest place that they’re both like. ‘Okay, let’s have the talk,’ because ‘I’m sorry about that,’ and you’re like, ‘Are you okay?’ It happened so instantaneously because we’re both in that open space already, we both thought we were having a private moment until it wasn’t anymore.
DEADLINE: Santi and Pryce are kind of on the outs at the end of that third episode. What does that spell out for the rest of the series? How does Zero come in and challenge the dynamic that they’ve been working on?
KAY: Zero definitely comes and blows things up in a lot of ways, but I think it ultimately fortifies everyone’s relationship. I think there’s a lot of that throughout the show. Relationships [are] being challenged and then deepened. Santi and Zero’s journey together is full of twists and turns. [That] ultimately, really allows them both to grow into themselves in really beautiful ways.
DAGER: Zero is the force, but also the glue, and it starts shaking everyone’s world up, but as you continue to watch the show, some sneaky stuff happens, but Zero really is holding the whole thing together. If you stick around and watch after Episode 3, you see how that happens, and then you see how that gets tricky. There’s great high moments, and then things come crashing down.
DEADLINE: Peter, how do you balance the fact that Santi is obviously a young adult and he doesn’t take well to coaching right away? There’s a moment, I think it’s in 3 when Pryce goes, “You are coachable!”
DAGER: That scene in Episode 3, along with another scene we were talking about at the end of 2, when Pryce gives Santi a new set of clubs and he’s making a joke, and Santi goes, “Thanks for the clubs. Thank you, old man,” and they have a nice moment. Those are very rare when they just have a nice moment. And that’s one of those moments where Owen and I filmed it, and we were just able to have fun with the scene and not bicker at each other. That’s one of those scenes that, honestly, I relished those scenes, and I enjoyed filming those scenes because there were so few of them in the beginning.
DEADLINE: Last question for you both, I feel like another common thread in the show is the theme of moving forward and to not really look at the past. How does that come into play for both your characters as we learn about their pasts?
KAY: I think that they are in a place in life that’s very formative, both of them, and they’ve also both been through a lot. For young people, they’ve had a lot of really intense family relationships, they’ve needed to be more independent than most people in that age range. I think that being able to give yourself the opportunity to have a fresh start at any age at any point in your life is such an incredibly difficult thing to do and an incredibly beautiful thing to do. It is deeply relevant to the golf context of of all of this. You can’t look at the shots you’ve taken and fixate on that, you have to look at [what] you’ve got and where you are and what you’re moving towards.
DAGER: The shot you have now. Yeah, I mean, all of that stuff is impactful, that your past is — I don’t even know if it’s not looking at it. I think you have to look at the past, but I think it’s understanding your past, accepting it and being like, “But that doesn’t need to be me now.”
KAY: Not living there or fixating on it.
DAGER: Instead just accepting it and being like, “Alright, if I could start a new, what choice can I take that’s most in line with my current self?”
The post ‘Stick’ Stars Peter Dager And Lilli Kay Talk “Secret Love” Between Santi & Pryce And “Emotional Landscape” Their Characters Share appeared first on Deadline.
