Jake Johnson on Pickleball, Prince, and Quitting Pot
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- Jake Johnson stars in 'The Dink,' a pickleball comedy with a Ben Stiller cameo, despite having no prior experience with the sport — requiring months of real-life training in pickleball and tennis so the climax scenes would look authentic.
- Johnson explicitly framed the film as deliberate anti-message counter-programming, made just before the 2024 US presidential election: 'I don't want to throw more wood on to that fire… there's also life.'
- Johnson revealed 'New Girl was so scary I had to stop smoking pot' because his co-stars came unusually prepared — a cold-turkey move he credits with saving the career-defining role that made him a name at 33.
- Prince personally reached out to cameo on 'New Girl' after binge-watching it from his tour bus, appearing in a 2014 post-Super Bowl episode watched by 26.3 million viewers and telling Johnson his three favorite shows were 'Cheers, Roseanne and New Girl.'
- Johnson is reuniting with director Joe Swanberg on 'The Sun Never Sets' with Dakota Fanning, having just closed a deal to take it to cinemas for an expected release later this year.
- Johnson's twin daughters (born 2014 with wife Erin Payne) think his 'Spider-Verse' voice role as Peter B. Parker is 'the most embarrassing — the old chubby one who just ate pizza.'
Why it matters: Johnson explicitly framed 'The Dink' as escape from what he calls 'heightened, brittle' prestige culture — a deliberate 'no messaging' counter-programming bet timed to a divisive election. The film's ensemble pulls (Ben Stiller cameo, Mary Steenburgen lead) and his simultaneous theatrical deal for the Swanberg reunion 'The Sun Never Sets' point to a commercial wager that audiences want relief, not another awards-season slog.
