How I Landed My First Role in Just ONE Week! | Dane Diliegro DSH #599

Did you know Prey would have that massive success or were you kind of nervous during the release?

I didn't even know what the movie was going to be called.

Our working title was Skulls.

You never know.

A lot of times you work on a project and you think it's going to be the biggest thing in the world or you're like, oh, I don't know.

And then, you know, and then it blows up.

Yeah.

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It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right we got dane delegro my man thanks for coming on thanks for having me it's very rare to uh have someone taller than me on the show it's yeah it's very rare to have someone close to my height in the same room as me and you were putting that height to use man you played pro ball for eight years right i did yep i was uh

yeah it was a lot of fun italy Italy, Italy for seven years, Israel for a year.

And I was with the Celtics for like the summer.

That was the peak of my career.

So you were on the summer league team?

No, not even.

I just trained with them for like in the summer of 2014.

Wow.

I had my own locker, though.

That was dope.

A lot of gear.

You got a photo of it hung up in your bedroom?

Yes.

No, no, no, not my bedroom.

Not my bedroom.

So you got to, was Tatum there then?

Or was that?

No, that was Rondo was there.

Kelly Olinik was there.

He's like one of my best friends now.

I was officiated at his wedding wow um he's a good buddy of mine he just got traded from the jazz to uh toronto which is his the town he grew up in oh dope yeah he's been consistent though the past two years 15 20 a game man he's one of the best seven-foot shooters in the league i think it per 100 minutes it's like luca lebron hint like him steph he's in the top five for pro-rated minutes per yeah 100 minutes i didn't know that that's an advanced analytic people don't read those if you leave him in the game like he will produce.

Yeah.

But they need to leave him in the game more.

Dude, I still remember him.

It was, was it Gonzaga?

Yes.

Yeah, Gonzaga.

He made a run.

He's a seven-foot guard.

Nobody knows that.

He grew up as a guard.

He's taller than everyone.

Now there's Wemby, dude.

God stammered 7-30 or something.

Inflexible.

He's like, dude, have you seen the video of that dude stretching?

No, actually.

He's not a human.

He can literally just fold in half when he touches his toes.

Oh, my God.

Like his chin to his knee.

Yeah.

Which is not for a seven-footer.

That's crazy.

Chin to your knee.

That's probably why he hasn't been getting injured, though.

I, you know, knock on wood.

I don't know, but he's, he's a freak.

He, I mean,

he's the future.

I was like, I used to be a John Morant guy.

I was like, okay, he, but, you know, gotta, you gotta stay smart and settled.

But Wemby,

yeah, there's nothing like him.

Yeah.

That's like, I mean, usually those tall guys get injured, but did you, did you deal with any injuries when you were playing?

Uh, when I was in Israel in 2014, I tore my ACL.

I came down with a rebound and my knee went like a little too far this way.

And I was like, oh, that's something's wrong.

But other than that, not really.

I feel that.

I want to talk about the transition from ball to acting.

Was that planned?

No.

When you play basketball overseas, which is not semi-pro is not anything to shake your face.

I'm out here in LA and people are like, oh, you play pro ball.

Like who'd you play for?

Expecting me to say Memphis or Minnesota.

And I was like, oh, I was in, you know, Italy for seven years.

And they're like, oh, like,

Sam, I'm sorry to let you down that I wasn't in the top 400.

In the world.

Yeah, in the world.

No, fully pro.

When you play overseas,

you're not in that one, 2% of guys who don't have to work once they retire.

So I'm always constantly thinking, what am I going to do next?

You know,

basketball, any sport is finite.

And it ends one day.

It ends for everyone.

Look at a guy like LeBron who's extending it, but it will end for him one day too.

It will be a sad day.

So I really wanted to host culinary travel television.

I would come to LA every summer to pitch this travel show I wanted to do.

Long story short, I was

home in Boston training for the next season of basketball.

I got a phone call from Boston Casting to be a stand-in on this Ryan Reynolds movie called Free Guy

and met the producers.

They came up to me.

They're like, hey, you got a, you're very tall, but you have a very strange, like, it's strange because you're proportionate.

Most people, your height are really long and lanky, long arms, and you have a great look.

Like, you should look into acting.

And

I, I pursued it.

I was going to LA the next week to pitch my show, and I ended up booking a Netflix show that shot in Korea for, you know, a month and a half or whatever.

Got a temporary apartment out here.

So I did that.

And yeah, I'm still living in that same apartment four and a half years later.

That's crazy.

Wait, so you went to Korea for your first job?

Yeah, it was crazy.

It was wild.

This show is called Sweet Home.

It's a Netflix show.

And I played this character called Protein, who is this like mutated bodybuilder.

It was wild.

It was insane.

I'd never been to Asia before.

Yeah.

You probably didn't even know the language.

Nothing.

You just

had a translator on set wow is the translator was a korean kiwi he's from new zealand so he had like he could speak english and like uh every time the director would give him directions he would he's like

so the director wants you to talk like you're running down the hallway and then you turn left and you i'm like yo just tell me like what i have don't give me step by step you need you know direction but um yeah that was a wild experience

and uh most people struggled to even get that first role So you kind of just jumped into it.

Yeah, very lucky.

Yeah, like a week into pursuing.

That's unheard of, right?

No, yeah, that's not normal.

So you think the height kind of helped you a lot?

Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is like essentially a non-human character.

And I'm, you know, 6'8 ⁇ , 245, 250,

which I'm, you know, if I wasn't that height, I probably would not have been able to portray this character.

But yeah, very fortunate that, you know, everything went well and I got rave reviews.

Love it.

You've been in a lot of big movies and shows.

Do you have a favorite that stands out to you so far?

Well, obviously, you know, My Baby is Prey, the Predator movie.

Playing an iconic character like that.

You know, there's really nothing like it.

But favorite,

I mean, I don't know.

I.

You know, I did this music video for this rapper called Benjamin Earl Turner for his music video called Headspace.

And it was like a two-day shoot,

not super high budget, but it was just a bunch of really creative people, really good people.

And I played this character called Habib, which is his imaginary friend.

And

I had so much fun.

And that the video went viral.

It did really well.

Like the director Ebteen won all these awards.

And I really had a great time.

Alec Gillis, who actually built the Predator costume, also did the costume for this.

He calls me for everything now.

Dude, I did not expect that answer because you've been in American Horror Story.

You've been Walking Dead.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, you know, American Horror Story was great.

Walking Dead was also a lot of fun.

Yeah, Habib and, you know, for that.

I mean, it's tough.

They're all so different.

You know, you have your six-hour makeups and then you have your, you know, 100-pound suits that you essentially just jump into and they zip it up.

You know, sometimes they're gluing things, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy was a whole makeup on my my face and a big heavy suit um

but you know they're each one is different and then when the job is done you you look at the ground and there it is the costumes like you know lifeless on the ground yeah with no person in it and then you you know you lay that performance to rest and you don't have a room where you keep a bit of memories in there no you know i'm a little bit of a squid i do you know i keep a couple things here and there but typically like guardians anything that's disney you're not oh you can't keep it man they they archive every screw every like they they are aware it's all inventoried oh yeah predator we had six suits and four heads like no one no that's like yeah they own all of that wow those heads cost 50 grand each geez just to make them just to make them holy crap why are they the suit head to toes you know are pretty good six figure numbers they're like because they're hands they're hand sculpted out of clay.

Damn.

Hand painted.

Everything's custom.

All the fabric inside is hand, you know, it's like you think of a suit, a $2,000 suit that you wear to the office.

That's just fabric.

This is like inches of foam latex.

There's fabric inside.

There's zippers.

There's buttons.

And they have to build it around the exact specifications of my body.

Yeah.

It's, it's a very, very specific thing.

And you have to build six of them because these suits get destroyed throughout, you know, the 100-day shoot.

Wow.

It's It's crazy.

Did you know Prey would have that massive success or were you kind of nervous during the release?

I didn't even know what the movie was going to be called when we shot.

Our working title was Skulls.

And I was like, what the hell is this?

This is crazy.

He's like, he doesn't have any armor.

You know,

you never know.

A lot of times you work on a project and you think it's going to be the biggest thing in the world and it never is.

Or you're like, oh, I don't know.

And then, you know, and then it blows up.

And what Dan did with this movie was incredible.

It's a sci-fi adventure story.

The thing that I really appreciated about that film is that typically in most Predator movies,

you have an environment and then you stick a predator in it.

And it's about the predator interacting.

This movie's Nadu's character, Amber Midthunder.

It's her story.

There just happens to be a predator in it.

It almost could have worked with like another monster, like a Bigfoot or, you know, some type of alien.

And I think that he did a great job of

kind of creating this new fresh version of the predator while still staying true to the franchise, keeping the things that the people love in.

And it just worked.

I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful movie.

We shot up in Calgary in Banff.

And

just all pistons were firing at the same time and, you know, six ME nominations.

It's a shame it didn't go to theaters um

but you know i i i'm super fortunate to be a part of that yeah that you know that film that franchise the amount of people that have you know told me how much that franchise means to them it's crazy i mean it meant a lot to me as well it's been around for so many years 87 1987.

wow it's crazy yeah and even though it didn't go to movies i mean you broke records on hulu which is pretty dope yes I think we were number one of all.

Number one.

Yeah.

That's wild.

And what went into that?

I was watching you on another interview.

You not only lost 25 pounds but you were taking mime classes martial arts classes and parkour classes wild because they were like yeah this predator's an animal he's gonna be running through trees he's gonna be fighting and i was like okay and then my friend doug jones who's like the lebron james of you know non-human acting he was um the pale man in pan's labyrinth he was also the fawn he was ape sapien and hellboy he was talking to me we went to lunch one day he was like you should go to mime school

mime school Never in a million years would think to go to

learning about communicating with your body without words, nonverbal communication.

Yeah.

It's incredible the amount of things I learned.

Telling a story,

you know, walking into a room and having the audience on paragraph three of your story before you even open your mouth and understanding.

your story by the way you hold your chest or your shoulders or you know the way you're you know are your feet turned in whatever all different things um just add to

who you are as an actor, especially when you don't have the luxury of words when you're portraying a you know a non-human character.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that much went into it, man, but you really can learn a lot from body language, yeah.

And and the head weighed 15 pounds, geez.

So, I teamed up with a company called um Iron Neck, who does a lot of things with MMA fighters.

And I think Rogan was plugging them quite a bit.

And they sent me one of their devices, and I strengthened my neck like for two months leading up to this film.

And the head weighed 15 pounds.

And for the predator to look forward, I had to, because my head was in the neck, I had to look straight down at the ground and do this weird kind of shrugging thing.

And it's just 15 pounds on my neck for, you know, you can wear the head up to 30, 40 minutes.

I think my record was like an hour and 15 minutes with the head on.

Damn.

But, you know, thank goodness for Iron Net, you know, I still have some neck damage from shooting that film because it was very, you you know, amber jumping on my shoulders and all falling down.

It was, it was wild.

That's crazy.

Do you have a go actor that you really look up to?

I really

like,

I appreciate Vince Vaughan and what he's done.

Obviously, with my height, there are what people think are limitations.

I appreciate a tall actor who,

oh, you're too tall.

You can't, you know, and

Vince Vaughan, he's so funny.

He's just.

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You know, his improv is unbelievable.

You know, you get to that mid-2000s, those comedies, wedding crashers, and classic.

Classic, even swingers, you know,

I really appreciate a guy whose trajectory

has gone the way.

If I could do half the things Vince Vaughan has done in his career, I'd be very happy.

Yeah, those Adam Sandler 2000 movies.

Oh, yeah.

It's like the, it's, yeah, that was, that was a different era of film.

They don't make movies like that.

No, they don't.

I mean, he's had a few on Netflix, but they just don't hit the same.

I don't know if it's because we're older or something.

I auditioned for Hustle.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Didn't get it.

It was for some German character.

Damn.

I want to talk about.

I've heard your audition process is brutal.

Oh, yeah.

It's terrible.

So for every like hundred you do, how many are you actually getting?

I mean, if you, if you get one out of

20, you're in the 1%.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Most of acting, most of the entertainment industry is failure.

You're kind of in this jacuzzi that's 98, 99% failure.

And then very rarely, you'll get little nuggets here and there of like, oh, great.

And what happens is that like the failure failure rate kind of dissipates a little bit.

This town is based.

There's like, there's

qualify, there's capability and there's qualification.

You or I might be able to do something, act a certain way in a movie, play a certain role, but we're not qualified to do it until you do a certain thing.

Oh, you've done this.

Okay, you're capable.

capable of doing this now.

We want you for this.

Oh, you've done this, this, and this.

Oh, we want you for this now.

You know, when I first moved to LA,

you know, playing monsters, I would email people and no one would get back to me.

Ever since Prey came out, now everyone, you know, wants me to play their monster, which I'm so grateful for.

But it's like, you know, hey, I had reached out to you two years ago and you never responded to me.

You know, people that I was aware of before Prey came out, who didn't know who I was were coming up to me after Prey and say, dude, it's amazing.

We'll be in touch.

We want to do that.

I emailed you two years ago and you didn't respond to my email so it's like oh you were the predator now you're qualified to do this or whatever and it's like i was capable of doing that thing before but now i have this stamp of approval that's a lot of this town which i which i find to be interesting i think they want to play it safe right from their perspective they want an actor that has been in a good movie because it might help with the box office right It's all, I mean, producers don't want to take risks, which I completely understand.

This is

a business and we're salespeople.

We're selling asses and seats and eyes on a screen.

That's what it boils down to.

And, oh, what happened?

The movie failed.

Well, we hired this guy.

Well, what has he done?

He hasn't done anything.

Okay, you're fired.

That was a terrible decision.

Well, we got this guy.

He did this, this, and this.

Oh, it's great.

What happened?

I don't know.

It's not my fault.

We hired him.

It's like, you know, so

crazy, unbelievable, unbelievable interest

in industry entertainment.

Yeah, I'd be curious to know what percentage of movies are actually profitable.

I don't, you know, I don't, those, those back-end numbers, I don't see any of that.

So it's

the check and the check, and you know, you'll get residual checks, yes, but it's um

you know, I just like to keep my head down, my nose clean, and you know, you work hard and you generally try to do the right thing and you hope things work out.

That's yeah, speaking of residual checks, did that strike end?

Because I know that was part of the

reason, right?

We went 180 days.

Um,

yeah, it was

long.

Scary time for you.

Well, you know, we were all in it, you know, so it's not like everyone else was working and I wasn't.

No one was working.

So I wasn't too much,

you know, dreading it.

Does that make sense?

The pandemic was scarier because there were some things going on, some things not.

Pandemic was more like, okay, no one can work.

Let's see who can just last the longest.

And we didn't know how long it was going to go.

The strike was going to end at some point.

The pandemic, I saw a lot of people leave town.

Damn.

And I'm glad I weathered the storm.

So you didn't act for two years the whole time?

Yeah.

Well, no.

I mean, we towards prey, we shot prey towards

like maybe midway through the pandemic.

There were a lot of very strict rules when we shot prey.

Yeah.

Getting tested all the time and distancing in certain zones and wearing masks.

As soon as the predator head came off, they had to throw a mask on.

Like, I'm like out of breath and sweaty like this.

I'm trying to catch, sorry, sorry, put a mask on.

I'm like, okay, okay, all right, just put it on.

Thank you.

Looking back, it's so funny.

So funny.

But in the moment, like, we were scared.

Yes, we were.

It's funny.

I'll post like a BTS photo of the movie.

And like, you know, if the head is off, we're in the mask.

You know, I always get the people in the comments like, you guys are still wearing masks.

Like, okay, first of all, it's old.

Second of all, no one knew.

We just didn't know.

You know,

that's so funny.

So cool.

Do you have a dream role you want to play?

Non-human would be Jason Voorhees.

Not even close to being a question.

Jason Voorhees is, I mean,

I idolized him since I was a kid.

I was him for Halloween like four times as a child.

Just a bad character.

I would love to, you know, don the hockey mask.

And then dream role.

I mean, honestly, dude, like,

I just, I want to play normal human characters.

I want to be a dentist i want to be a lawyer i i you know

i think it's

you know you're too tall no i'm not i can i can do it i i a great filmmaker regardless of height can can make it work

because people say the framing you're too tall for the framing you know and i don't i don't believe that um

well why can't i you know lead a movie or I don't believe that I'm too tall for that.

So

I don't know.

I know this is, you know, problematic, but in Oliver Twist, there's a character called Fagan.

And I think he's pretty cool.

He sings, he dances, and he's loves the kids to go out pickpocketing for him.

I just think it'd be a real, I don't even know how to, you know, sing or dance on stage, but just be a real challenge.

Musicals were hot growing up, man.

High school musical.

Oh, yeah.

That was my

dude.

I just found out.

So I love Terminator growing up.

Yeah.

And as a kid, I always thought Arnold was super tall.

Sure.

Do you know how tall he is?

6'2.

Yeah.

That's not as tall tall as i thought no he's uh it's funny i just started reading his book be useful oh yeah um

yeah because you'd think on camera this guy's like six five six six machine easily yeah yeah six two he's not uh i met lou faregno at a comic-con a couple weeks ago he's tall he's probably about six five damn he's still got some pretty big muscles too yeah wow But Arnold, what a crazy story.

Like crazy.

Just coming from another country.

I'm going to be this bodybuilder.

Great.

Dominates.

I'm going to be an action star.

Dominates.

I'm going to be governor.

Dominates.

Yeah.

I mean, there's really nothing this guy can't do.

Yeah.

Super inspiring.

And governor of Cali.

I mean, what a job these days.

As an Austrian.

Yeah.

I mean, it's probably the hardest state in America to make policies in.

I heard just to modify your house out here, it takes a year.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's wild.

That's wild.

Um, any upcoming projects?

I know you probably can't talk about some of them, but uh, yeah,

I just booked a new one.

We start this Friday.

Can't talk about that yet.

That'll be, that's for Netflix.

That'll be a cool one.

Different role for me, which I really appreciate.

I'm really excited about it.

I'm sure at some point you'll hear about it.

Nice.

But I'm in Blumhouse's new movie called Imaginary, which comes out March 8th.

And I'm not in it for super long, but my minutes are effective.

So

it's a fun movie.

It's a movie about an imaginary friend and got left behind and this teddy bear.

And there's a lot of creepy, scary things that go on.

What genre is it?

It's horror.

I like horror.

I like thriller is my favorite, but I like horror too.

Yeah,

there's some jump scares in this.

Yeah, it's not so much a thriller, but there are some creepy sequences and some good scares.

Let's check that out, man.

No, it's yeah, it's a fun film.

It's a fun.

And you're a human in that one?

I'm not a human.

I'm, um, I'm, I'm the big bad thing at the end.

Keep an eye out for you.

Yeah.

It's, uh, my, my character's name is Chauncey Bear.

So it's, it's, yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll see.

You'll know.

You'll know when you see it.

You got a favorite horror series?

Friday the 13th.

Ooh.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Jason Voorhees, it's, um,

you know, I know Halloween is probably the most favorite,

you know, child's play with Chucky.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

There's just something about Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th that really strikes me.

What about you?

I don't know if Saw is horror, is it?

Oh, yeah.

Saw?

I used to love Saw, man.

Saw's in the top 10 highest-grossing horror franchises of all time.

Damn.

Yeah.

I never considered it horror, though, because it's not like, it's a different type of horror.

Gor.

Yeah.

It's very gory.

Yeah.

But I like that one because I put myself in their shoes and I like to like be in that moment.

And you know what's you know what's the highest grossing film franchise of all time for horror?

What is it?

I'll give you a guess.

Just guess.

I'll give you two guesses for horror.

You're making it seem like it's random.

Halloween.

That's a great guess.

That's not it.

What else?

You said it's not saw, so dude.

Saw's in the top 10.

Oh, Texas Chainsaw.

Very close.

You know, great answer.

Not it.

It's it.

What?

They only have two movies.

Yeah.

The first one did almost half a billion dollars.

Damn.

I don't think Halloween has even reached a billion yet.

Wow.

That's surprising.

It one and it two,

cumulatively, cumulatively.

Cumulatively,

have made more money than any other horror franchise in the history of cinema.

Holy crap.

Wild.

Is that because of streaming services, you think?

I don't know.

I just, you know, it was

Warner Brothers out of Warner Brothers, a huge studio.

You know, my friend Andy Muschetti directed those.

It did a great job.

I mean, it's those movies have everything a good horror movie is supposed to have, but the franchise is obviously existing via Stephen King, and they just,

you know, that was like the Kickstarter for now.

All these horror franchises are getting rebooted.

Yeah.

It's like taking off.

Yeah, they bring, bring, they just brought another one back.

I forget which one, but yeah, I know what you mean.

Christopher Nolan just said he wants to do a horror movie.

There needs, there should be a horror genre in, you know, for some of the award shows, I believe.

Oh, there's no horror award?

No, horror is very looked down upon in the industry.

Why?

It's usually like low-budget stuff.

Oh, God.

It's not great acting.

You know, you look at something like Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon,

you know,

it's different from like an it, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Um, not that there's anything wrong with it.

I think it is great, but it's just, it's looked down upon.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

That's one of my favorite genres.

You know, we got to make the push.

We got to, we got to get horror out there more.

Absolutely.

Dude, it's been a, it's been fun.

Where can people find you and what you're up to?

Oh, I'm on Instagram, DD, just two D's on Instagram.

Twitter, D D Numero Uno.

I think I'm the, I'm not verified.

I, you know, I don't have a lot of followers on Twitter, but I should have more.

And then,

yeah, that's it.

Mostly Instagram.

All right.

Oh, TikTok.

TikTok is Dane.

D-A-A-A-N-N-N-E-E-E.

Wow, that's a lot different than Dane.

Dude, when Prey came out, I had like

1600 followers on TikTok.

And I posted some BTS.

I went to like a quarter of a million in a week.

Damn.

One of my videos got like 40 million views.

Damn, it's crazy.

TikTok's your most followed platform, though.

Yeah, but I like do the least on it.

All right, well, thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me.

It's great.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you tomorrow.