How ‘A Man on the Inside’ Pulled Off Its Baseball Scene (and What Needed to Get Lower)

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[This story contains some spoilers for Netflix‘s A Man on the Inside, and specifically episode seven, “From Russian Hill With Love.”]

The writers of Netflix’s A Man on the Inside referred to the season’s seventh installment as “the Ferris Bueller episode.”

Charles (Ted Danson), the widower who’s gone undercover inside a San Francisco retirement group to assist a non-public investigator, and his new buddy Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson) ditch an outing at an area mall to see the town’s sights. Through Calbert’s entry to his son’s firm automobile and “the magic of tv,” as creator Mike Schur put it, the 2 associates take a ship tour previous Alcatraz, view the Golden Gate Bridge, chat in a redwood forest, soak up a view of the Palace of Superb Arts and watch a Giants recreation at Oracle Park, the place they’ve a heartfelt dialog about their fraught relationships with their grownup children.

It’s a touching scene, and in addition a giant one for Schur, an enormous baseball fan who has written in regards to the recreation (on the late, nice Hearth Joe Morgan web site) and co-hosts a podcast with sportswriter Joe Posnanski that’s (usually) about baseball.

“Baseball was a giant a part of it to me,” Schur tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I simply considered Calbert very early as a baseball man. There was one thing about the way in which we talked about him. I used to be like, this man loves baseball, and I believe it’s partly as a result of we knew Stephen was going to play the half. He’s acquired an actual lovely stillness to him. He’s a really contemplative individual. And I used to be like, this isn’t an NFL fan. This isn’t a school basketball fan. This man’s a baseball fan. I simply noticed it in the way in which we have been designing him, after which as soon as the actor signed on, it was like, that is the appropriate factor.”

Earlier than Henderson took the function of Calbert, the present’s writers had envisioned the scene as happening at a Golden State Warriors recreation, however “when Stephen signed on, I used to be like, no, he’s not an NBA man.” (The NBA staff does make its approach into the present through Margaret Avery’s character, Florence, who’s an enormous fan of the Warriors.)

Working with Main League Baseball, Danson, Henderson and the Man on the Inside crew filmed the scene at Oracle Park in Could. They shot a lot of the dialogue earlier than the gates opened for that day’s recreation, utilizing about 200 background actors within the right-field stands, then refilmed components of it to position them among the many 37,000 followers in attendance for a recreation between the Giants and the Cincinnati Reds.

“After we shot the scene the place they stroll down the concourse and sit down, it was the underside of the primary inning. As they have been sitting down, a participant on the Giants hit a grand slam and the place went bananas,” Schur recalled. “They noticed what had occurred, they usually have been leaping up and down and cheering. We stored yelling on the digital camera man to shoot the [action on the] area. You may see the man trotting across the bases, and it was unbelievable.”

There was only one downside: None of that in any approach match the tone of the scene that they had already filmed.

“As quickly because it was over, I used to be like, ‘Oh, we are able to’t use any of that.’ You may’t present the gang shedding its thoughts after which minimize to a scene the place they’re speaking very contemplatively and quietly about their children, with none proof of what simply occurred,” Schur stated.

The crew additionally had one different impediment to work by, Schur stated: “It was Hi there Kitty bucket hat night time, so everybody within the crowd is sporting a Hi there Kitty bucket hat, which we needed to shoot round to the very best of our skill. However I simply love baseball stadiums. I discover them to be essentially the most lovely and peaceable locations on Earth, and I used to be very joyful that we acquired to truly shoot in an actual one throughout an actual recreation.”

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A Man on the Inside is now streaming all episodes on Netflix. Learn THR‘s full interview with Ted Danson and Mike Schur.

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