Digital Social Hour - How I Landed My First Role in Just ONE Week! | Dane Diliegro DSH #599

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Starting point is 00:00:45 millions of listeners around the world. Tune in each week as we explore the folklore, ghost tales, and local legends that delivered the chills you're looking for. Learn more and subscribe today over at lorepodcast.com. Did you know Prey would have that massive success or were you kind of nervous during the release? I didn't even know what the movie was going to be called. Our working title was Skulls. You never know. A lot of times you work on a project and you think it's going to be the biggest thing in the world. Or you're like, oh, I don't know. And then, you know, then it blows up.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Yeah. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right we got dane delegro my man thanks for coming on thanks for having me it's very rare to uh have someone taller than me on this show it's yeah it's very rare to have someone close to my height same room as me and you were putting that height to use man you played pro ball for eight years right i did yep i was uh yeah it was a lot of fun italy italy italy for seven years israel for a year uh and i was with the celtics for like the summer that was the that

Starting point is 00:02:01 was the peak of my career so you're on the summer league team no not even i just trained with them for like in the summer of 2014 wow i had my own locker though that was uh that's dope a lot of gear you got a photo of it hung up in your bedroom yes no no no not my bedroom so you got to was tatum there then or was that no that was rondo was there. Kelly Olenek was there. He's like one of my best friends now. I was officiated his wedding. Wow. He's a good buddy of mine. He just got traded from the Jazz to Toronto,

Starting point is 00:02:36 which is the town he grew up in. Oh, dope. Yeah. He's been consistent though the past few years. 15, 20 a game, man. He's one of the best seven-foot shooters in the league. I think per 100 minutes, it's like Luka, LeBron, him, Steph. He's in the top five for pro-rated minutes per 100 minutes.

Starting point is 00:02:56 I didn't know that. That's an advanced analytic. People don't read those. If you leave him in the game, he will produce. But they need to leave him in the game more. Dude, I still remember him. Was it Gonzaga? Yes. Yeah, Gonzaga.aga he made a run he's a seven foot guard yeah nobody knows that that's the thing he grew up as a guard he's taller than everyone now there's wemby dude god damn

Starting point is 00:03:15 seven three or something inflexible he's like dude have you seen that the video that dude stretching no he's not a human he can just he can literally just fold in half when he touches his toes oh my god like his chin to his knee yeah which is not for a seven footer that's crazy into your knee that's probably why he hasn't been getting injured though i you know knock on wood i don't know but he's he's a freak he i mean he's the future i was like i used to be a john morant guy i was like okay he but you know you gotta Morant guy. I was like, okay, he, but you know, you gotta, you gotta stay smart and settled. But when B yeah, there's nothing like him.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Yeah. That's like, I mean, usually those tall guys get injured, but did you, did you deal with any injuries when you were playing? When I was in Israel in 2014, I tore my ACL. Oh, so how long my knee, I came down with a rebound and my knee went like a little too far this way and i was like oh that's something's wrong yeah so but other than that not not really i felt that yeah i want to talk about the transition from ball to acting was that planned um no when you know when you play basketball overseas which is not semi-pro is not anything

Starting point is 00:04:28 to shake your feet you know i'm out here you know in la and people like oh you play pro ball who'd you play for expecting me to say memphis or minnesota that's like i was you know italy for seven years and they're like oh like damn i'm sorry to let you down but i wasn't in the top 400 in the world yeah in the world um no fully pro um you know when you play overseas you know you're not in that one two percent of guys who don't have to work once they retire so i'm always constantly thinking what am i going to do next you know basketball any sport is finite yeah and it ends one day it ends for everyone um look at a guy like lebron who's extending it but it will end for him one day too it will be a sad day so i really wanted to host culinary travel television i would come to la every summer to pitch this travel show i wanted to do long story short i was home in boston

Starting point is 00:05:26 training for the next season of basketball i got a phone call from boston casting to be a stand-in on this ryan reynolds movie called free guy and met the producers they came up to me they're like hey you gotta you're very tall but you're very strange like it's strange because you're proportionate most people your height are really long and lanky long arms and you have a great look like you should look into acting and um i i pursued it i was going to la the next week to pitch my show and i ended up booking a netflix show that shot in korea for you know a month and a half or whatever got a temporary apartment out here um so i did that and uh yeah i'm still still living in that same apartment four and a half years later that's crazy wait so you went to korea for your first job yeah it was crazy it was well the show's called sweet home

Starting point is 00:06:16 it's a netflix show and i played this character called protein who was this like mutated body builder it was wild that's insane i'd never been to asia before yeah you probably didn't even know the language so you nothing you just translator translator on set wow is the translator was a korean kiwi he's from new zealand so he had like he could speak english and like uh every time the director would give him directions he would he's like so the director wants you to talk like you're running down the hallway and then you turn left and you i'm like you know just tell me like what i have don't give me step by step i need you know direction but um yeah that was a wild experience

Starting point is 00:06:57 i love that and uh most people struggle to even get that first role so you you just kind of just jumped into it they're very lucky yeah like a week a week into pursuing that's unheard of right no yeah that's not that's not normal so you think the height kind of helped you a lot yeah i mean obviously this is like an essentially a non-human character um and i'm you know 6'8 245 250 which i'm you know if i wasn't that height i probably would not have been able to portray this character right um but yeah very fortunate that you know and everything went well and i got rave reviews and love it you've been in a lot of big movies and shows do you have a favorite that stands out to you so far well obviously you know my baby is prey the predator movie playing an iconic character like that um you know there's there's really nothing like it

Starting point is 00:07:47 but favorite uh i mean i don't know i you know i did this music video for this rapper called uh benjamin earl turner uh for his music video called headspace and it was like a two-day shoot um not super high budget but it was just a bunch of really creative people really good people and i played this character called habib which is his imaginary friend and um i had so much fun and that the video went viral it did really well like the director ebtine won all these awards And I really had a great time. Alec Gillis, who actually built the Predator costume,

Starting point is 00:08:30 also did the costume for this. He calls me for everything now. Dude, I did not expect that answer. Cause you've been in American Horror Story. You've been walking dead. Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:08:38 Well, you know, American Horror Story was, was great. Walking dead was also a lot of fun. Yeah. Habib. And you know,

Starting point is 00:08:44 for that, I it's it's tough they're all so different you know you have your six hour makeups and then you have your you know 100 pound suits that you essentially just jump into and they zip it up um you know sometimes they're gluing things you know guardians of the galaxy was a whole makeup on my face and a big heavy suit um but you know they're each one is different and then when the job is done you you look at the ground and there it is the costumes like you know lifeless on the ground with no person in it and then you you know you lay that performance to rest and you don't have a room where you keep a bit of memories in there you know i'm a little bit of a squid i do

Starting point is 00:09:24 you know i keep a couple things here and there but typically like guardians anything that's disney you're not oh you can't keep it man they they archive every screw every they they are aware it's all inventoried oh yeah predator we had six suits and four heads like no one no that's like yeah they own all of that wow those heads cost 50 grand each jeez just to make them just to make them holy crap why i mean the suit head to toe you know are pretty good six figure numbers they're like because their hands they're hand sculpted out of clay damn hand painted. Everything's custom. All the fabric inside is hand. It's like you think of a suit, a $2,000 suit that you wear to the office.

Starting point is 00:10:10 That's just fabric. This is like inches of foam latex. There's fabric inside. There's zippers. There's buttons. And they have to build it around the exact specifications of my body. It's a very, very specific thing. and you have to build six of them because these suits get destroyed throughout you know the 100 day shoot wow it's crazy did you know prey would have that massive success or were you kind of nervous during the release i didn't even know what the movie was going to be called when we shot we were our working title was skulls and i was like what the hell is this like this is this is crazy he's like doesn't have any armor you know you never know a lot of times you work on a project and you think it's going to be

Starting point is 00:10:53 the biggest thing in the world and it never is or you're like oh i don't know and then you know and then it blows up yeah and what dan did with this movie was incredible it's a sci-fi adventure story the thing that i really appreciated about that film is that typically most predator movies it's you have a environment and then you stick a predator in it and it's about the predator interacting this movie's not whose character amber mid thunder it's her story there just happens to be a predator in it it almost could have worked with like another monster like a bigfoot or you know some type of alien and i think that he did a great job of kind of creating this new fresh version of the predator while still staying true to the franchise, keeping the things that the people love in.

Starting point is 00:11:45 Right. And it just worked. I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful movie. We shot up in Calgary in Banff. And just all pistons were firing at the same time. And six Emmy nominations. It's a shame it didn't go to theaters. But I'm super fortunate to be a part of that yeah that you know that film

Starting point is 00:12:08 that franchise the amount of people that have you know told me how much that franchise means to them it's crazy i mean it meant a lot to me as well it's been around for so many years 87 1987 wow it's crazy yeah and even though it didn't go to the movies i mean you broke records on hulu which is pretty dope yes i think we're near we're number one number one yeah that's wild and what went into that i was watching you on another interview you not only lost 25 pounds but you were taking mime classes martial arts classes and parkour classes wild because they were like yeah this predator's an animal he's gonna be running through trees he's gonna be fighting and i was like okay and then my friend doug jones who's like the LeBron James of, you know,

Starting point is 00:12:47 non-human acting. He was the pale man in Pan's Labyrinth. He was also the fawn. He was ape sapien and hell boy. He was talking to me. We went to lunch with him. He was like, you should go to mime school. Mime school. Never in a million years would think to go to learning about communicating with your body without words non-verbal communication yeah it's incredible the amount of things i learned telling a story um you know walking into a room and having the audience on paragraph three of

Starting point is 00:13:16 your story before you even open your mouth understanding your story by the way you hold your chest or your shoulders or you know the way you you know are your feet turned in whatever all different things um just add to who you are as an actor especially when you don't have the luxury of words when you're portraying a you know non-human character yeah yeah i didn't know that much went into it man but you really can learn a lot from body language yeah and and the the head weighed 15 pounds jeez so i teamed up with a company called um iron neck who does a lot of things with mma fighters and i think rogan was plugging them quite a bit and they sent me one of their devices and i strengthened my neck

Starting point is 00:13:56 like for two months leading up to this film and the head weighed 15 pounds and for the predator predator to look forward i had to because my head was in the And for the predator to look forward, I had to, because my head was in the neck, I had to look straight down at the ground and do this weird kind of shrugging thing. And it's just 15 pounds on my neck. You can wear the head up to 30, 40 minutes. I think my record was like an hour and 15 minutes with the head on.

Starting point is 00:14:23 But thank goodness for iron that you know i still have some neck damage from that film because it was very you know amber jumping on my shoulders and all falling down it was it was wild that's crazy do you have a go actor that you really look up to i really like i appreciate vince vaughn and what he's done. Obviously with my height, there are what people think are limitations. I appreciate a tall actor who, oh, you're too tall.

Starting point is 00:14:58 You can't, you know, and Vince Vaughn, he's so funny. He's just. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below.

Starting point is 00:15:14 And here's the episode, guys. You know, his improv is unbelievable. You know, you get to that mid 2000s, those comedies, Wedding Crashers. Classic. Classic. Even Swingers. I really appreciate a guy whose trajectory has gone the way. If I could do half the things Vince Vaughn has done in his career, I'd be very happy. Yeah, those Adam Sandler 2000 movies.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Oh, yeah. That was a different era of film. They don't make movies like that. No, they don't. I mean, he's had a few on Netflix, but they just don't hit the same i don't know if it's because we're older or something i auditioned for hustle oh yeah yeah yeah didn't get it was for some german character damn i want to talk about i've heard your audition process is brutal oh yeah it's terrible so for every like hundred you do how many are you actually getting i, if you get one out of 20, you're in the 1%.

Starting point is 00:16:10 Wow. That's crazy. Most of acting, most of the entertainment industry is failure. You're kind of in this jacuzzi that's 98, 99% failure. And then very rarely you'll get little nuggets here and there of like, oh, great. And what happens is that like the failure rate kind of dissipates a little bit. This town is bait. There's like, there's quality, there's a capability and there's qualification. You or I might be able to do something, act a certain way in a movie,

Starting point is 00:16:45 play a certain role, but we're not qualified to do it. Until you do a certain thing, oh, you've done this? Okay, you're capable of doing this now. We want you for this. Oh, you've done this, this, and this? Oh, we want you for this now. When I first moved to LA, playing monsters, I would email people, no one would get back to me. Ever since Prey came out, now everyone wants me to play their monster, which I'm so grateful for. But it's like, hey, I had reached out to you two years ago and you never responded to me. People that I was aware of before Prey came out who didn't know who I was were coming up to me after Prey and say, dude, it's amazing. we'll be in touch.

Starting point is 00:17:25 We wanted to, I emailed, I emailed you two years ago. You didn't respond to my email. So it's like, oh, you were the predator. Now you're qualified to do this or whatever. And it's like, I was capable of doing that thing before, but now I have this stamp of approval. That's a lot of this town, which which i find to be interesting i think they want to play it safe right from their perspective they want an actor that has been in a good movie because

Starting point is 00:17:50 it might help with the box office right it's all i mean producers don't want to take risks which i completely understand this is this is a business and we're salespeople we're selling asses and seats and eyes on a screen that's what it boils down to and oh what happened the movie failed well we hired this guy well what has he done he hasn't done anything okay you're fired that's a terrible decision well we got this guy he did this this and this oh it's great what happened i don't know it's not my fault we hired him like you know so um crazy unbelievable unbelievable interesting in industry entertainment um yeah i'd be curious to know what percentage of movies are actually profitable i don't you know i don't those those

Starting point is 00:18:31 back-end numbers i don't see any of that so it's uh the check and the check and you know you'll get residual checks yes but it's um you know i just like to keep my head down my nose clean and you know you work hard and you generally try to do the right thing and you hope things work out that's yeah speaking of residual tracks did that strike in because i know that was part of the reason right we went 180 days um yeah it was long scary time for you well you know we were all in it you know so it's not like everyone else was working and i wasn't no one was working so i wasn't too much you know dreading it does that make sense the pandemic was scarier because there were some some things going on some things

Starting point is 00:19:19 not pandemic was more like okay no one can work let's see who can just last the longest and we we didn't know how long it was going to go the strike was going to end at some point right the pandemic i saw a lot of people leave town damn and i'm glad i weathered the storm so you didn't act for two years the whole time yeah well no i mean we towards we shot prey towards um like maybe midway through the pandemic there were a lot of very strict rules when we shot prey yeah getting tested all the time and distancing in certain zones and wearing masks as soon as as soon as the predator head came off they had to throw a mask i'm like out of breath and sweaty like this i'm trying to catch my sorry it's a mask i'm like out of breath and sweaty like this i'm trying to catch me like

Starting point is 00:20:05 sorry it's a mask i'm like okay okay all right just put it on thank you you know looking back it's so funny so funny but in the moment like we were scared yes we were it's fine i'll post like a bts photo of the movie and like you know if the head out head is off we're in the mass you know i always get the people in the comments like you guys are still wearing masks like okay first of all it's old second of all no one knew we just didn't know yeah that's so funny so cool do you have a dream role you wanna you wanna play him non-human would be jason vorhees not even not even close to being a question that jason vorhees is i mean i i you know i idolized him since i was a kid i was him for halloween like four times as a child just a bad character i would love to put you know don the hockey mask um and then dream

Starting point is 00:20:53 role i mean honestly dude like i just i want to play normal human characters i want to be a dentist i want to be a lawyer i you know i think it's. I, you know, I think it's, you know, you're too tall. No, I'm not. I can, I can do it. I, I, a great filmmaker, regardless of height can, can make it work because people say the framing, you're too tall for the framing, you know? And I don't, I don't believe that. Um, well, why can't I, you know, lead a movie or i don't believe that i'm too tall for that so i don't know i know this is you know problematic but in oliver twist there's a character called fagan and i think he's pretty cool he sings he dances and he's loves the kids to go out pickpocketing for him i just think it'd be a real i don't even know how to you know sing or dance on stage but yeah just be a real challenge musicals were hot growing up man high school musical oh yeah that was my dude i just found out uh so i love terminator growing up yeah and as a kid i always thought arnold was super tall sure do you know how tall he is six two yeah that's not as tall as i thought

Starting point is 00:22:00 no he's it's funny i just started reading his book be useful oh yeah um yeah because you would think on camera this guy's like six five six six machine easily yeah yeah six two he's not uh i met lou ferregno at a comic-con a couple weeks ago he's tall he's probably about six five damn he's still got some pretty big muscles too yeah wow but arnold what a crazy story like crazy just coming from another country i'm gonna be this bodybuilder great dominates i'm gonna be an action star dominates i'm gonna be governor dominates yeah i mean there's really nothing this guy can't do yeah super inspiring and uh governor of cali i mean what a job these days as an austrian

Starting point is 00:22:43 yeah i mean it's probably the hardest state in America to make policies in. I heard just to modify your house out here, it takes a year. Yeah, that's wild. Any upcoming projects? I know you probably can't talk about some of them, but...

Starting point is 00:22:59 Yeah, I just booked a new one. We start this Friday. Can't talk about that yet. That's for Netflix. That'll booked a new one. We start this Friday. Can't talk about that yet. That's for Netflix. That'll be a cool one. Different role for me, which I really appreciate. I'm really excited about it. I'm sure at some point you'll hear about it.

Starting point is 00:23:16 Nice. But I'm in Blumhouse's new movie called Imaginary, which comes out March 8th. And I'm not in it for super long but my minutes are effective so it's it's it's a fun movie it's a movie about an imaginary friend and got left behind and you know this teddy bear and there's a lot of creepy scary things that go on what what genre is it it's horror i like i like thriller is my favorite but i like horror too yeah there's it's um there's some jump scares in this yeah it's not so much a thriller but there are some creepy sequences and some some good scares let's check that out man no it's yeah

Starting point is 00:23:57 it's a it's a fun film it's and you're a human in that one i'm not a human i'm um i'm i'm the big bad thing at the end keep an eye out for you yeah it's uh my character's name is chauncey bear so it's it's yeah you'll you'll you'll see you'll know i don't know when you see it you got a favorite horror series friday the 13th yeah yeah i mean jason vorhees it's um you know i know halloween is probably the most favorite you know um child's play with chucky yeah but i don't know there's just something about jason vorhees and friday the 13th that really strike me what about you i don't know if saw as far as it oh yeah saw i used to love saw

Starting point is 00:24:36 man saws in the top 10 highest grossing horror franchises of all time yeah i never considered it horror though because it's not like it's's a different type of horror. Like gore. Yeah. It's very gory. Yeah. But I like that one because I put myself in their shoes and I like to be in that moment. You know what's the highest grossing film franchise of all time for horror? What is it?

Starting point is 00:24:58 I'll give you a guess. Just guess. I'll give you two guesses. For horror. You're making it seem like it's random. Halloween? It's a great guess.'s not it what else uh you said it's not saw so dude i was in the top 10 oh texas chainsaw very close you know great answer not it it's it what they only have two movies yeah the first one did almost half a billion dollars damn i don't think halloween has even reached a billion yet wow that's surprising it one and it two comically cumulatively have made more money than any other horror franchise in the history of cinema holy crap

Starting point is 00:25:41 wild is that because of streaming services you think i i don't know i just you know it was warner brothers i don't warner brothers a huge studio um you know my friend andy muschietti directed those it did a great job i mean it's those movies have everything a good horror movie supposed to have but the franchise is obviously existing via stephen king and they just you know that was like the kickstarter for now all these horror franchises are getting rebooted yeah it's like taking off yeah they bring they just brought another one back i forget which one but yeah i know what you mean christopher nolan just said he wants to do a horror movie there needs there be a horror genre for some of the award shows, I believe.

Starting point is 00:26:27 Oh, there's no horror award? No. Horror is very looked down upon. Really? Why? It's usually like low budget stuff. Oh, okay. It's not great acting.

Starting point is 00:26:36 You look at something like Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon. It's different from an It, if that makes sense yeah um not that there's anything wrong with it i think it is great but it's just it's looked down upon i did not know that yeah that's one of my favorite genres i know we got to make the push we gotta we gotta get horror out there more absolutely dude it's been a it's been fun where can uh people find you and what you're up to oh i'm on um, DD, just two D's on Instagram. Twitter, DD numero uno. I think I'm the, I'm not verified. I, you know, I don't have a lot of followers on Twitter, but I should have more. And then yeah, that's it. Mostly Instagram.

Starting point is 00:27:19 Oh, TikTok. TikTok is Dane. D-A-N-N-E-E. Wow. That's a lot different than D-D. Dude, when Prey came out, I had like 1600 followers on TikTok. Yeah. And I posted some BTS. I went to like a quarter of a million in a week. Damn. One of my videos got like 40 million views. Damn. So TikTok's your most followed platform now.

Starting point is 00:27:40 Yeah, but I like do the least on it. All right. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. It's great. Thanks for watching, guys. See you tomorrow.

Digital Social Hour - How I Landed My First Role in Just ONE Week! | Dane Diliegro DSH #599

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