'Unstoppable' star Jharrel Jerome talks months of training, grueling scenes and movie magic

The new film “Unstoppable” tells the inspirational true story of Anthony Robles, a wrestler who was born with one leg and became a NCAA Division 1 champion.

Actor Jharrel Jerome trained for months with Robles to prepare to play the wrestler. Jerome made his film debut in “Moonlight” and won an Emmy for his role in the Netflix limited series “When They See Us.”

“Unstoppable” also stars Don Cheadle, who plays Robles’s college coach, and Jennifer Lopez, who plays Robles’s mother. Oscar-winning editor Billy Goldenberg directed the film. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

In the movie Jerome is missing a leg, just as Robles is, an illusion created by “movie magic,” Jerome says. “It was a simple thing of wrapping my leg in a green cast, almost like a green screen where you can just play around with it in post-production and erase things.”

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Jerome had to keep his wrapped leg lifted up behind him, he says, “pretending like it's just not there at all.”

Making the leg disappear on screen was a mix of editing, acting, and Robles serving as Jerome’s body and stunt double.

“It was incredible,” Jerome says about working with Robles. “Not only was he my body double, my stunt double, but he actually got on the mat with me and trained me.”

Robles has a specific style of wrestling because he’s missing a leg.

“I guess we could have put Olympic wrestlers, we could have had anybody to really teach me wrestling,” Jerome says, “but to learn his style, it was important for him to be there.”

Aside from the movie magic and computer-generated imagery, Jerome also had to learn how to play someone who has one leg, to move swiftly on crutches, to balance and hop on one leg, and he thought carefully about that.

“I understand the sensitivity of it. You know, I am able-bodied. I do have both my legs and there are actors I know that have one leg. And so, if it was going to be me, I knew that I didn't want to go halfway with it,” he said. “I got on the mat for seven months, five days a week, three hours a day. And then right after I got off the mat, I got on crutches and I walked everywhere. I ran everywhere with them. And I became in control of them because I knew that if I didn't look like I was confident on the crutches or if I didn't look like I was confident balancing myself, then I wouldn't be Anthony Robles. And I also wouldn't pay respect to those who do go through what Anthony goes through.”

It was an intense process he called the Anthony Boot Camp.

“I just spent months just kind of getting into that body and trying to make sure I did it with a sense of authenticity that made it real,” Jerome says.

The story “Unstoppable” starts when Robles is a star wrestler in high school in Mesa, Arizona. He has high hopes for a college wrestling scholarship but the only full-ride offer he gets is from Drexel University in Philadelphia, which Robles knows isn’t a top school for wrestling.

Robles decided instead to go to Arizona State, even though he wasn’t guaranteed a place on the team and had to try out to earn a spot.

“Anthony decided to stay home to take care of his family, because that's what the story is equally about, is not just Anthony's fight on the mat, it's his fight off the mat and all the things he went through at home,” Jerome said. “And I think a lot of that pain that you see him go through at home, he just kind of bottled it up and he let it all out on the mat and he kind of took the things that are supposed to knock you down in life and remind you that you are ‘not enough.’ He took that and instead, he turned that into a sort of militant ferocity where he was like, ‘Nothing's going to stop me and I'm going to prove myself.’”

The movie shows the “Hell Week” of trying out for the team. Robles running on the track with crutches, running up a mountain trail on crutches, lifting weights and, of course, wrestling.

“I think wrestling is one of the most grueling sports you can participate in,” Jerome says. “It requires your full strength, your full confidence, your full belief in yourself as a wrestler.”

Jerome has played real-life characters before. In the Netflix limited series “When They See Us,” he played Korey Wise, one of the Central Park Five, the young men who were convicted of rape and assault in New York and later exonerated. He said that role got him comfortable with the pressure of playing someone still living, who will sit down and watch Jerome in the role.

“Going through that process with Kory, who I still have deep love for, getting to kind of know him on a personal level, allowed me to approach acting in a different sense, especially when I play somebody. I'm not just acting, but I have a real serious job and it's to tell someone's story the right way,” Jerome says.

He won an Emmy for his role in “When They See Us.” He said telling that story helped the five men get the respect they’d been looking for 30 years.

“That's when I realized that acting could be so much bigger than me and bigger than the passion that I love,” Jerome says.

One of Jerome’s costars in “Unstoppable” is Don Cheadle, who plays his coach at Arizona State, and the two actors developed a bond off-screen as well.

“Don, I can consider right now my mentor and I'm so lucky because, you know, it went from he's my scene partner and we're doing a film together to a real nice understanding of each other. And I think he really appreciates the love I have for acting,” says Jerome. “He's called me, he's taken me under his wing and he's giving me a lot of advice as I move forward in the industry. And I'm learning not only the beautiful part of it, but also the ugly parts of it. And so Don has been there to remind me how to understand the ugly and find the beauty in it.”

Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Cocoran adapted it for the web.