The Main Event is a fun and refreshing family film that is hitting the Netflix streaming platform today. The film stars Seth Carr as Leo, an 11-year-old boy, who discovers a magical mask and enters a competition to become the next WWE superstar. Tichina Arnold plays Leo’s fun and hip grandmother who is a blast to watch in this film. I had the chance to catch up with the two stars and discuss their roles in The Main Event.
You’ve had such an impressive filmography for a 12-year-old. Can you tell us how you got into the industry and what keeps you focused in your career?
Seth: I first got into the industry when I was a baby, I started in print and then from there when I was five, I booked my first role on Days of Our Lives. Then I started to book national commercials and then movies. Then I became more confident and I had more opportunities out there for me including The Main Event. I was so lucky and I’m glad I got this role.
You’ve gone from smaller to larger roles such as young Killmonger in Black Panther to co-starring in the film Breaking In. How is it being in a film that is centered around your character?
Seth: It was really crazy. This was my first big role, which is me acting the entire movie and having two characters as well was actually crazy. Being able to see two different sides of a person who both do something different. So this was really exciting to me cause this was my first big challenge for me as the main character of a movie.
Can you tell me how you were able to achieve your Kid Chaos voice in the film?
Seth: They changed the pitch of my voice in post-production for Kid Chaos.
Tichina how was it putting a new, twist on what the modern-day grandmother looks like?
Tichina: Well at first I was very hesitant about the whole grandma thing when they offered me the role. I’m like, dude, like, do I have to play a grandma? But once I read the script and realized what type of character she was, it was a lot of fun for me to do it. I’m in that era where a lot of my peers who are my age, they had children early. I didn’t have a child early, but a lot of my friends had children early who are young grandmothers. So I considered myself the new age grandma. So being able to, play with Seth was a lot easier because he’s just such a wonderful talent to work with and he is constantly professional. He did that!
I was able to play a grandma and portray some physical comedy, some physical humor, you know, being into what my grandson’s into, which a lot of grandparents are, we just don’t see it much. So that’s why I was really happy about taking this role when I realized what it consisted of because you don’t see roles like this often. And I always wanted to do a movie where you leave the film, like, wow, I want to be G ma y’all. So this is this film that allows you to see these wonderful characters in this wonderful setting and with a really good message.
How was it just being a part of a film that’s really just for the family?
Tichina: And that’s exactly what I feel as well as just very refreshing. You don’t see it often and you know what fills the day that you could really sit down and enjoy with four generations of family members, you know? So, uh, I love that about it. And the marriage between Netflix and WWE, I think it’s the perfect combination for them to create content. I think Jake Harris did an amazing job directing it. He had a very clear vision, which made it a lot easier for us as actors in it to be able to portray these roles and also to work with these real-life wrestlers. You know, I was a little kid. I used to watch wrestling and me and my sister would wake up Saturday morning and what our Saturday mornings consisted of was watching wrestling, watching Kung-Fu, and watching soul train. It’s nostalgic.
Seth, since you get to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to wrestling moves, how was the preparation for actually getting into the ring with these wrestlers?
Seth: The first day I started training and stuff, they put me in the ring and like before we ended the day, they put me on a harness to see how I would work or if they needed my stunt double to do some of the stunts. So they put me on the harness then I did a couple of flips, but I had a hard time doing a couple of the backflips, but after a while I got it. We were training on the rings and stuff. We were, um, falling like off of the crane inside of like the building and stuff. Uh, but it was just a crazy experience.
Do you have any memorable moments on set that you wanted to share? Just that really stood out throughout filming?
Tichina: Yeah. You know, I like actually watching everybody else. I liked watching the action. I like watching the wrestlers um literally getting the ring and do it over and over again and uh, and watching how all these, the kids in this movie, I mean, brilliant actors like Good Lord. I was like, I’ve got to step up my game with them. Like, Hey, everybody’s like doing an amazing job and we had a really good crew of people in Vancouver. I mean, everybody worked their butts off for this film to make this film happen. And it was a lot of, a lot of work and time put into it. But I, you know, I, I got used to doing a PG movie, which is really cool because you get to see a different process. But, uh, I enjoy just watching it, watching everybody do a wonderful job.
Seth: Like, definitely one of my favorite moments was um, being at the last, like the last day against like Sampson and stuff. Um, that whole like cage match thing when they had me walk out into the, um, the crowd though, like the arena and stuff and everybody was on both sides of like the stairwell down. That was just crazy. Then they have my music blasting in the background and I was like, wow. Like I’ve seen this happen on my TV before. So like now I’m really getting to do this. Then it was just going through my head how crazy this is. And then walking into the ring like, like my heart is actually pumping cause I was like, Oh my goodness. It was just the, the whole arena was just loud and exciting every day. It was crazy.
The Main Event is now streaming on Netflix. Be sure to check out the film and share your thoughts about it in the comment section below!
Seems like it should be interesting.
Looks entertaining