Exclusive: Norbert Leo Butz Talks Theatre and Football Connections for AMERICAN SPORTS STORY

Can football and theatre mix? Is there overlap between these two, often disparate disciplines? Norbert Leo Butz thinks so.

The two-time Tony winner is currently starring in American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez as legendary New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The FX series charts the rise and fall of the NFL superstar's career, exploring the public and private facets of his identity, his family, his career, and their legacy in sports and American culture. Several other Broadway performers round out the cast including Lindsay Mendez, Tony Yazbeck, Kerry Butler, and more. 

Belichick is a figure who played an integral role in the early career of Aaron Hernandez and BroadwayWorld sat down with Butz to discuss approaching the role as somebody outside of the sport, finding Belichick's humanity, and how the worlds of football and theater are perhaps more similar than people think.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.

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What drew you to this project and the role of Bill Belichick?

I think I drew them rather than they drew me. Sometimes you just get stupid lucky as an actor and a role will fall into your lap. I knew almost nothing about Bill Belichick and have never been a football fan. I am now, but when my agent first called me, I had to say, 'Remind me who Bill Belichick is?' I bet I had watched five NFL games from start to finish my entire life until I did this. Now I'm completely hooked, and I watch football around the clock.

I think I was on Ryan [Murphy]'s radar for another audition I did. Something about my mug, this face of mine, reminded him of Belichick a little bit. But my not having any attachment to the character was a good thing because it gave me permission me to just approach it like any other role.

I do have to say that I did briefly meet the guy and had forgotten. I was doing a television show called Bloodline down in the Florida Keys and Belichick fishes down there in the off-season. He's a big fan of Kyle Chandler, who was my co-star, and he came to set one day.

I have found him to be an absolutely brilliant man. Obviously the winningest coach in the history of the game, and a man with fascinating contradictions.

What kind of contradictions?

When most people think of Bill Belichick, they say, 'Oh, are you doing the voice? Are you doing the mumbling? Are you doing the pissed off, crabby, authoritarian person?' That's definitely a part of his brand, but in the research I did, there's a far more complicated guy there. His exterior gruffness was 100% strategic. He's almost a scientist when it comes to football and competition. In real life, he is really funny- as we now know from the Tom Brady Roast and the commercials that he's doing. He is a loyal friend. His kids adore him. He has done a ton of good. There's a whole complicated person there, but in the series, we really see him only in relationship to Hernandez during those peak years in the late aughts.

How did you approach that other side of him that’s less visible to the public?

I looked at a lot of the YouTube footage and the press conferences. There's all those things: the ticks, the voice, the shape of the mouth. But it was really by reading a couple of the biographies, specifically David Halberstam's Belichick biography. That really got more into who he was privately.

Where I really connected with Belichick was his relationship with his father. Once I started reading about his childhood and his father, something in my mind clicked. His father, Steve Belichick, was this first-generation European immigrant son. Very modest beginnings, a huge work ethic. He was a strict but fair father and he worshiped his dad. My dad was similar. My dad, and my grandparents came from Germany and Hungary, and there was that kind of first-generation stoicism that they had and that his dad had. So that was a real in. Our fathers were similar and I related to that father-son relationship a lot.

If I'm in a role and I can't find that level of commonality between myself and the character, I'm always in real trouble. But when I find it, it doesn't matter really how different you are from the character. Once you find that strand, it tethers you in some interior way and I'm usually okay.

In episode 5, there’s a moment where your character listens to Bon Jovi’s It’s Not My Life before practice. Do you have anything like a mantra or song that gets you pumped up before a performance?

Not in that way. I don't listen to something right before going on stage that gets me pumped up. But what I will do sometimes is create a playlist of songs that I think the character would have on a playlist. It's just a fun thing to do.

Bill Belichick really loves rock and roll as I do, especially the classic rock and roll from the seventies and eighties. He loved Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen and all those sort of dad bands. Listening to that in my headphones at three in the morning while I was in the hair and makeup trailer was not so much about getting pumped up, but just listening to what he might've listened to as he was on a treadmill.

There are several other Broadway actors involved in this series. How was it working alongside familiar faces from the stage in such a different context?

Belichick was such an iconoclast and sort of a lone wolf. So I didn't get to work with any of them very much. Most of my scenes are with Aaron and with Jerry Levine, who plays Robert Kraft. It was a little bit lonely in that aspect. But I think Belichick must have had a similar experience. He was often alone and struggled socially.

It seems to me that there’s this binary thinking about sports and theater. There are sports people and theater people and they don’t really mix and they don't necessarily overlap very often. But, it seems like there's room for both.

100%. As I was thinking about this project and finding that commonality, I started to find this interesting parallel between sports and performance. They are both extremely competitive, cutthroat, political careers that can explode and then fade quickly. There's often a cult of personality. All of these things had me thinking: 'Okay, how am I going to play this NFL coach?' This guy is constantly having to deliver. Well, that's what it feels like for me. Always being afraid that if it isn't a winning season, you're going to be fired. I could really relate to that.

Both sports and performance are highly specialized skill sets that not a lot of people can do. There aren't enough jobs for the people who do it well. And then that internal competition and the demons that come up when you lose or when you're not in a successful show. This is one of the morals of the Hernandez story. Like many other athletes, he has put his entire identity into being this football star, but was unable to deliver and, because of personal issues, family trauma, and systemic issues in the NFL, he felt like he was nothing. Again, I can relate to that. I see that in our industry all the time. 

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American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez is currently streaming on Hulu. Watch the trailer below.

Photo Credit: Bruce Glikas