Big Shot's Cast Explains How They Trained For the Disney+ Basketball Show

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The first episode of Big Shot dropped on Disney+ today and sees John Stamos as a big-time college basketball coach named Marvyn Korn who is forced into coaching a girl's high school team after getting fired. In honor of the show's debut, ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with some of the show's cast, including many of the young stars from the show's basketball team. We asked the actors if they needed to have any basketball skills in order to land their roles and about the type of training required for such a sports-heavy series.

"I think the requirement was that we were willing to learn," Cricket Wampler (Samantha Finkman) explained. "I did play a couple of years when I was pretty young, but none of us had too much experience. But you know ... some of us knew the game. Cause we had parents ... dads that played or you know, family members that played a lot."

"I had no basketball experience at all whatsoever," Nell Verlaque, who plays the team's star player, Louise Gruzinsky, shared. "So some good acting and some good preparation, hopefully. We did a basketball boot camp for like two months before and then also during filming. So, I had a crunch time of learning what I needed to."

"I mean, a lot of those baskets are baskets we genuinely had to make," Tiana Le (Destiny Winters) added. "And so we spent months before the actual filming process, just practicing as a team, sometimes from 8 to 12 in the afternoon. Just hours, like four hours a day. And so we built chemistry there, and that kind of went into the actual show. But we actually became like real players and the shots that you see, if it's a full-court shot, that's not TV magic."

We also spoke to Jessalyn Gilsig, who plays Holly Barrett, Stamos' assistant coach on the series. While she doesn't have to play basketball like the younger stars, we asked if she had any love for the sport.

"Yes, I'm a huge sports fan across the board," Gilsig shared. "I might be the biggest sports fan on the show. I'm not gonna claim that yet, but you tell me if anybody else makes that claim, and yeah, I do love basketball. I actually just was watching the NCAA tournament this past week, which was super exciting. I played basketball when I was in high school. I don't think I was a great basketball player. Not only am I not that tall, but I don't think I was necessarily that good, but see, the thing for me when it comes to athletics, which is terrible, is that everything that I lack in skill, I make up for with delusion. So I like to think I'm really, really good at things. It's really a problem. So yes, I'm very enthusiastic. The girls laugh at me all the time because I like to approach it as if I am a master of basketball because in my mind I am."

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Stay tuned for more from our interviews with the Big Shot cast! You can watch our chat Cricket Wampler, Tiana Le, and Tisha Custodio at the top of the page. You can also view our conversation with Monique Green, Sophia Mitri Schloss, and Nell Verlaque here, our chat Yvette Nicole brown here, and Jessalyn Gilsig here.

Big Shot's premiere episode is now streaming on Disney+.