Actor Jake Johnson Talks Apple TV’s ‘The Dink,’ Chicago Bears & More with Rich

Jake Johnson has been acting professionally for 20 years and considers himself a pro who does not break on camera. Then Ben Stiller started improvising.

"It was so funny that I didn't care that I was ruining takes," Johnson told Rich. "I was like, it's unprofessional, but I've been a fan of this man since the Ben Stiller Show when I was a kid. Watching him riff, I was like, yeah, he's one of one, man."

That is roughly the energy of "The Dink," which premieres globally Friday, July 24 on Apple TV. Johnson plays an up-and-coming tennis player whose career keeps running into injuries, and the film's whole premise sits on the fact that tennis people frown upon pickleball. Rich compared watching it to visiting an old friend, and Johnson said that framing beat his own.

"You know what I've been saying about it, and I realize I'm saying it wrong, but you say it better than me," Johnson said. He had been calling it yacht rock. What he actually wanted was the feeling of hanging out with old friends. "It's a movie. It's 90 minutes. There's no big messages. We're not teaching you anything."

The secret weapon, according to Johnson, is Ed Harris, who plays his father and runs tennis at the club. Johnson thinks it is Harris's first comedy, and Harris approached it like a drama.

"With him, it was like we were doing a little drama about fathers and sons," Johnson said. If a line got dropped, Harris would mutter about it, and suddenly the whole cast tightened up. "But what it does is it brings a backbone to the movie. Where you're like, oh, now we got some stakes."

The moment Johnson's character first meets him, he extends a hand and Harris does not shake it. Fully improvised.

Johnson took tennis lessons from Brad Gilbert to prepare, then played pickleball with pros, and came away a convert to the idea that the game has levels. An 80-year-old can play an 8-year-old on day one, which he called shocking for an athletic person. Standing at the net against three top players is something else entirely.

He also volunteered that his very first job in the business ended up on the cutting room floor. He was cast in "Step Brothers" as a character named Razor, the guy who hands Rob Riggle's character his first steroids in a flashback. The scene was cut.

Riggle turned out to be a keeper anyway. The two later worked on "21 Jump Street," where Johnson says Riggle knocked on his hotel door minutes after his wife's flight left, arrived with moonshine, and kicked off what Johnson describes as the craziest 14 hours of his life. "Not only do I love this guy, but this is the craziest 14 hours," he remembered thinking. "I'm now going to love Rob Riggle until the day I die."

Then came the Bears shirt, and Johnson made clear he is not wearing it ironically. The Evanston native thinks this is one of the best chances Chicago has had in a long time, and he thinks Ben Johnson is real.

"He is a maniac. He's fun," Johnson said, adding that after watching what Ben Johnson did to Green Bay, he felt a little bad for Matt LaFleur. "You could be a little nicer. You don't have to toy with it."

His win-loss projection landed at 12 and 5, with a sweep of the Packers, which Rich noted would win the division.

The team that actually scares him? The Rams. And he would like Aaron Donald to please stay retired.