Oscar Winner Matt Damon Reveals Michael Jordan’s Role in Casting ‘Air’

Getting Michael Jordan's blessing was the easy part. Getting Viola Davis was the condition that could have killed the whole movie.

Matt Damon walked Rich through how "Air" actually got made, and the short version is that Jordan did not just sign off on it. He rewrote it.

Ben made the trip to Florida to see Jordan before anyone committed to anything. Damon was supposed to go too, but his kids had something that day. The purpose of the visit was simple. They wanted Jordan's blessing, because without it the ending of the film falls apart.

"If he comes out and goes, nah, they shouldn't have done it," Damon said, letting the sentence hang where it needed to.

So Ben pitched him the script they had already bought. And Jordan, per Damon, "actually gave him some great ideas."

The first one reframed the entire picture.

Ben asked about Jordan's father. "My dad's a great guy," Jordan said. "My dad was a great guy."

Then Ben asked about his mother.

"My mom runs shit," Jordan said.

Damon's retelling of Ben's reaction is the best beat in the whole story. "Really?" Ben asked. Jordan said yes, and the way he said it landed. Ben reported back that it was the first time he had seen that particular look on Jordan's face.

Then Ben asked whether he should talk to him some more, and Jordan cut him off. "You want to talk to my mother?"

That was the moment it clicked. The mother had barely been in the version of the script they owned. She was about to become the spine of it.

Ben started to ask whether there was an actress Jordan had in mind. He never finished the sentence.

"Viola Davis," Jordan said.

Damon got the phone call framed as good news, which it was, with an enormous asterisk attached. Jordan was fine with them making the movie, with the clear understanding that it was their project and not his. But the blessing came with a requirement.

"The tricky part is we have to get Viola Davis or we can't do the movie," Damon said.

Sit with the degree of difficulty there. As Damon put it, they had to get "America's treasure, like the finest actress on the planet" to say yes, and she was only going to say yes if the role was worth her time. The role, at that point, was not.

So they went back and did a full rewrite. Then they took it to Davis with an honest pitch. If she wanted to do the movie, the movie would get made. If she did not, they simply could not make it.

She said yes, and then she kept working. "She came in and she had great ideas," Damon said. "She's brilliant."

The rest of it sounds like the shoot everybody wishes they got. Damon called it "a really joyful shoot" and said it was a lot of fun. Rich brought up Jason Bateman, and Damon agreed without hesitation. "He's great."

One casting question needed no negotiation at all. Ben was always going to be Phil Knight.

"That was always the plan," Damon said.