Jon Hamm on the Mumbai set of Million Dollar Arm, which releases this Friday

Last year, actor Jon Hamm — better known as the dapper Don Draper from Mad Men — was in India to shoot Million Dollar Arm, a real-to-reel story of two Indian boys who journey to America to become celebrated baseball pitchers. The one to spot their talent? J.B. Bernstein, played by Hamm. A chat with the 43-year-old charmer on the Friday film.

What was it about this project that attracted you?

I was intrigued by the fact that it was a true story and a story that had kind of gone under my radar. When I read the script, I looked up the real story online and as I read a little more about it, I was fascinated. This is kind of an angle into a sports movie you don’t really see very often because it’s not traditionally about sports. It’s not about a big game or the big thing. It’s more a story about people and how they relate to one another and we realise that this character is learning a lot about himself as well.

Tell us about the real J.B. Bernstein… what impression did he make on you?

The real J.B. Bernstein is a little bit different than I am, but he’s a big thinker and is a very successful guy, kind of off his own sweat. He started in trading cards. He worked for a company called Upper Deck, and was very successful in that world and the big explosion of sports memorabilia. And then he got into being an agent and representing athletes. But he’s always been a kind of outside-the box thinker, which is also very interesting and intriguing for me coming to play the character. He had a financial imperative to get the big idea out there and he came up with something that no one had thought of before. You can’t really point to a lot of instances in any business, really, where you meet a guy who comes up with something that no one’s thought of before.

Describe your character and its evolution through the film.

Well, when we first meet my character J.B., he’s sort of a ladies’ man. He’s very aggressively single and enjoying his life as a sports agent in Los Angeles. Basically, he comes up with this idea to make a ton of money. This idea is to go to India and find two cricket players out of the sea of 1.8 billion people and market them and turn them into international baseball sensations. But he forms a connection with these two kids and realises that he’s affecting their lives, and not always positively. And so he makes the decision to actually become a force for positive change in their lives and becomes much more of a father figure to the boys than I think he ever intended. And he learns what the important things in life are. And that’s another thing that resonated with me. A lot of movies have stories of redemption and figuring things out, but this just came from a very real place. The fact that it’s a true story shouldn’t be forgotten.

What was your impression of Rinku and Dinesh?

We got to meet both Rinku (played by Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (played by Madhur Mittal) when we were in India. Dinesh is no longer in professional baseball, but he is involved very much with ‘The Million Dollar Arm’, which continues in India. I actually got to meet the two boys and they’re both incredibly successful, obviously very happy to be doing what they’re doing. And they owe their life changing to this guy, J.B.

Rinku’s a big guy. He stands about 6’4”, probably a little over 220 pounds, and you don’t see a lot of big dudes like that in India. He’s a lovely, lovely young man, and he’s living life. Both the guys have a tremendous drive to succeed. And we show a little bit of it in the movie. You realise that they’re leaving their villages for the first time ever, and coming to the States. Rinku is still in the minor leagues and working his way up and he has got a ton of talent.

Tell us about the on-screen chemistry you developed with the cast...

A big piece of the movie, obviously, is India, and we shot in India. We cast Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal who are probably recognisable to audiences from Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire who I’d never met before getting to India. That was fascinating to sort of start up, meet the guys and go, ‘Okay, here we go, we’re on this journey together’. And in many ways it mimicked the real life journey. We started in India, we did all the stuff there first. Then we came to the States. A big part of the chemistry was basically us figuring each other out in real time. It was a fun little family that we grew over in India, and we brought it back here to the States, much like the way the actual story and the movie unfolds.

What was your impression of Suraj Sharma who plays Rinku?

The first thing you realise when you’re with the boys is that they are very young. I don’t consider myself very old, although, time begs to differ, but they’re both in their early 20s, and Suraj sort of shot to international stardom with Life of Pi. But he’s a very grounded kid, and he’s doing everything the right way, he’s taking it all in. He’s got wisdom beyond his years and he’s got great parents.

It’s a testament to what they’ve done to keep his feet on the ground. When we shot the movie, he was getting ready to go to NYU in the fall. So he’s doing everything the right way.

And Madhur Mittal who plays Dinesh?

Madhur has been around a little longer. He’s been working since he was I think eight or nine, in Bollywood, and obviously in Slumdog Millionaire. He’s an incredibly moving performer. We saw him play kind of the bad guy in Slumdog, and in this he plays something completely different, which is just this sort of soulful, wide-eyed, young kid, who is thrust into this bizarre set of circumstances. And he pulls it off. He’s heart-breaking in many ways, in the movie.

How did you like Craig Gillespie’s style of directing?

Craig is the Energizer bunny! He was our leader in India. When people started flagging, you just look to Craig who’s running around, covered in sweat but just having the time of his life. And I can remember coming back one day after a really, really hot day and all I wanted to do was fall into the pool, and I was making my way down to the pool, and I see Craig running on the treadmill. So, I knocked on the window and said: ‘Are you kidding me? Like, you have to be as tired as I am!’ And he just kept going. I know a little about what it takes to direct something, and you’ve got to be that guy to everybody, you have to set the example, and he did a wonderful job of that.

What were the biggest challenges you faced working on this film?

We had a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time, and we were facing a ticking clock of when it would start raining in India. When it starts raining in India, it doesn’t stop for a month. So that was a big challenge. And there’s a language barrier, obviously. The Indian crew was fantastic, they couldn’t have been nicer and more hospitable to us everywhere we went.

When you get a chance to go see the world and see someplace like India, and get paid for it, it’s even better, and hopefully make a movie that a lot of people are going to see and a lot of people will be moved by. I saw some things in India that I never thought I would see. Fortunately, we live in a world where everyone has a camera attached to them 24 hours a day, so I was able to capture a lot of it. And I would send texts back home and be like: ‘This happened today… and there’s a cow walking down the street next to a Rolls Royce’, or whatever.

I’ve been fortunate enough in the last 10 years of my life to get to travel a lot more than I did basically in the first three decades of my life. But I’d never been to India. And it is a unique place. It’s an exciting, different, chaotic, unique place. There’s really nowhere else like it. And the people there are incredibly friendly, incredibly welcoming, joyous, there’s always a smile on their face. There, family means so much.

Who will this movie appeal to most?

If you like baseball, you’re gonna like it. It’s a true story, it’s got a romance to it and it’s got this fantastic flavour of India, which a lot of people haven’t seen. Yes, there’s the Taj Mahal and there’s certain other landmarks, but there’s a lot of it that’s very gritty and real.

film facts

The film is based on the lives of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel (in picture), who were spotted in India by sports agent J.B. Bernstein as part of a reality show called Million Dollar Arm and became celebrated baseball pitchers in America

The film has been shot in Mumbai, Atlanta and Los Angeles

The film’s music has been composed by A.R. Rahman and has 14 tracks sung by Iggy Azalea, K T Tunstall, Sukhwinder Singh and Raghav Mathur

Why will you watch Million Dollar Arm? Tell t2@abp.in