’80 for Brady’ Costars Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola on Doing Improv With Sally Field and Teaming Up With Tom Brady One Last Time

So did you put in a special request to get paired up with Sally in your scene, or was that fate?

DA: That’s just the universe aligning itself.

After Super Bowl LI, if I had told you that one day they were going to make a movie about it, but it would star Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Sally Field, and you’d play yourselves, but only in two scenes, how insane would I have sounded?

DA: We could never imagine. At halftime, Julian kept saying, “This is going to be a hell of a story,” and, obviously, it turned out to be one of the most amazing games. Hopefully the movie’s pretty good, but I haven’t gotten to see it yet. Julian, have you?

JE: No, I haven’t. It was just cool to be a part of it and to see these ladies in their element, and how they turned it on, and how they were with people. We were pretty much stand-ins, so we were just kind of there and got to observe how they worked, and it was awesome to experience that.

DA: For me, the best part was that I got to talk to Sally about how she got started in acting. And she learned from doing improv, so when she approaches a scene in a movie, she and the director know she can go off-script a little bit. And it really made my job as a first-time actor that much easier, because we were just sitting down and having a conversation, and the next thing I know, the scene’s over. So it was a very comfortable situation.

JE: My scene was with Rita, and it was the same exact experience. All of a sudden she’s touching my beard, and I’m feeling warm and fuzzy, and then it was over. It was really cool to see how they flip a switch, and they don’t let us know what’s going on because they want that genuine response.

I’ve been told that the beard rub was all Rita’s idea. What was your first instinct when she pitched that? 

JE: I mean, when Rita Moreno says that, you just go with it.

Were there any nerves coming into this? Luckily, you’re playing yourselves, in a football locker room, with some of your closest friends.

JE: [Laughs.] It was so hard.

DA: We were in the locker room, and we were supposed to be exhausted. And I remember, after that game, I was so tired that I couldn’t even see straight, and I was trying to put myself back in that situation. But I found myself just smiling the whole time because I was working with Sally and I was just so happy to be there.

Danny, you’ve played for a couple different teams, but had the greatest success of your career with the Patriots. And Julian, the Patriots are the only NFL team that you’ve ever known. So what was it like reuniting with this special group and putting that Pats jersey back on together?