‘Hustle’ Star Kenny Smith Talks Sharing Scenes With Adam Sandler in Netflix Film (Exclusive)

Hustle will premiere on Netflix on Wednesday, June 8, and the film features Adam Sandler playing a basketball scout, Stanley Sugarman, who has found the next potential NBA superstar. Because the film is about basketball, various NBA players and legends star in the movie, including Kenny Smith who plays Stanley’s friend Leon Rich. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Smith talked about the experience of sharing scenes with Sandler. 

“Well, it makes your job easy, because you’re reacting to someone who’s great at it, instead of trying to figure out, ‘Where should I be? What should I be saying? How should I feel?’ No. You’re just reacting to somebody who’s great at,” Smith exclusively told PopCulture. “He’s so believable that it makes your job simple.”

Smith’s character is a sports agent who played college basketball with Stanley. After basketball, Smith went on to be an analyst for TNT’s NBA pregame show Inside the NBA with Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley. However, Smith came close to doing the same thing Leon does in Hustle. 

“You know what the funny thing is? For a week, my agent courted me to be a sports agent,” Smith said. “I called him back and I said, ‘Nah. I don’t want to do that.’ He said, ‘Why wouldn’t you want to do that? You’d be good at it. You’re personal,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, ‘Because I wouldn’t want to represent myself.’ I’m like, ‘I know the headaches I put you through. I don’t want to be put through those headaches.’ I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to be that guy. I was a prima donna. I don’t want to be messing with prima donnas.’”

With Smith being known for his role on Inside the NBA, fans will see him in a different light when watching Hustle. And while he was playing a different character, it wasn’t challenging for him since he knows sports agents very well. “That’s what I do for a living,” Smith said when making the comparison between NBA analyst and actor. “They’re my thoughts, what I think about the game and how it is. This is someone else’s thoughts that you’re speaking, which is totally different. But it was authentic and it was on point.”

“You don’t have to research far. We know sports agents. I know sports agents. So I didn’t have to research far. But in terms of the authentic or the way it’s said, it’s not typically the way that I would say things or the way I would do things. That was the fun part, learning a different … being a different person inside your own body.”