Sylvester Stallone Begins Shooting Scenes For ‘This Is Us’
Sylvester Stallone has started shooting scenes for his latest acting gig, but it’s not another installment of Rocky or Rambo. The 71-year-old movie star has settled in for a surprising small screen gig on This Is Us, and based on the social media photos that he has shared, Sly is feeling right at home with the cast of the hit NBC drama.
This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia was an integral part of helping to sign Sylvester Stallone, who played his dad in the 2006 movie Rocky Balboa. Ventimiglia told late night host Jimmy Kimmel that This Is Us producers called upon him to help score a “big movie idol, icon” like Stallone for the storyline about his TV son Kevin Pearson’s (Justin Hartley) Hollywood movie role. While Milo’s character is not alive in the present day, he assured his old pal Sly that his presence on This is Us would affect his own character’s story.
“When I pitched it to Sly, I said, ‘Listen, my son … You are his movie idol, but you gotta wonder where he gets it from. He gets it from dad,” Milo told Kimmel. “And so his involvement was a very big part of my character’s storyline, of Jack’s storyline, which meant a lot to me because Sly is one of my idols and I got to work with him.”
On his first day on the This Is Us set, Stallone posted an Instagram photo of himself and Milo posing next to a Harley Davidson with the caption, “My good buddy Milo Ventimiglia who nice enough to invite me to be on the show #thisisus.”
Ventimiglia later took to Twitter to return the love, writing, “Was just like old great times @TheSlyStallone. Can’t wait to do it again. Can’t wait.”
Sylvester Stallone also shared photos of himself posing with Ventimiglia’s TV kids, Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz while working on the This Is Us set.
During the Television Critics Association summer press tour, This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman announced that Sylvester Stallone will play himself on the upcoming season of the show, as part of a storyline involving Kevin Pearson’s (Justin Hartley) role in a Ron Howard war movie. Fogelman told TCA reporters that Stallone’s character will act as a “father figure” to Kevin, and he “hears what Kevin is experiencing in his life with his own father, and talks to Kevin a little bit about life and acting and memory and aging,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
Sylvester Stallone has been a movie icon since his 1976 blockbuster, Rocky. Ahead of his big screen debut, he logged a few minor TV credits on Police Story and Kojak, but his TV appearances have been very rare.
Sylvester Stallone is only scheduled to appear in one episode of This Is Us. He joins a long list of famous faces that have already made cameos on the blockbuster NBC drama, including Ron Howard, Seth Meyers, Katie Couric, and the late Alan Thicke, who logged one of his final acting roles on the This Is Us pilot.
You can see Milo Ventimiglia talking about how he convinced Sylvester Stallone to guest star on This Is Us below.
This Is Us Season 2 premieres on Tuesday, September 26 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
[Featured Image by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for FIJI Water]
