Jason Segel on HBO's Winning Time: 'This is to basketball what Boogie Nights is to porn'
If you’re watching HBO’s Winning Time, you’ll notice that it’s not exactly a docuseries. It doesn’t stick to the facts. It’s hardly about basketball, even.
Which is why it makes perfect sense to compare it to a movie that appears to be about one very specific industry … but it’s really about so much more.
That’s what Jason Segel — best known for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, How I Met Your Mother and so much more — had to say about the series.
During his conversation with For The Win last week, Segel — who’s cast as former Lakers coach Paul Westhead = had the perfect comparison to make between Winning Time and a certain Paul Thomas Anderson classic:
“When I saw the pilot, I thought to myself: ‘This is to basketball what Boogie Nights is to porn.’ It’s about it, sure. But what it’s really about is the setting and characters and the era and the costumes.”
In our chat, Segel also discussed his thoughts about Westhead’s character arc, which was a wild journey from a Shakespeare-quoting English teacher to an NBA champion. You’ll also see him share stories about his experience meeting the late Kobe Bryant, his takeaways on the set of Winning Time, his thoughts on the modern-day Lakers, and plenty more.
You can read the rest of the conversation Segel had with For The Win below.
Viewers can watch new episodes of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty every Sunday at 9pmET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.