Who plays Andre the Giant on ‘Young Rock’? He’s a formerly obscure Carolina Panther
Former Carolina Panther Matt Willig was an anonymous offensive tackle for 14 NFL seasons. Well, he was anonymous except for that one time with the Panthers in 2004, in what Willig laughingly called “my personal claim to shame as a Panther.”
And Willig wasn’t very anonymous that other time in Carolina, either, when he hid in that freezing ice chest in Indianapolis to prank his teammates in 2003 during the Panthers’ first Super Bowl run.
But now Willig has found a level of fame in the most unusual of ways — playing legendary wrestler Andre the Giant on the new family sitcom “Young Rock,” which explores the early life of future mega-star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
At 6-foot-8 and 290 pounds, Willig has long been told in Hollywood that he was “too big” to play many roles.
“But for this one,” Willig told The Observer, “I worried that I might be too small.”
No need to worry. Willig’s performance as Andre the Giant is surprisingly touching — especially in Tuesday night’s episode (8 p.m. Eastern on NBC), when he gets his star turn on an episode called “My Day with Andre.”
Willig has sometimes been typecast as a villain or bit-part henchman who later gets eclipsed by the hero — “I’ve played all the big guy roles,” he said. But with Andre, Willig has been able to channel the gentle giant persona that in reality is closer to his own. And Willig’s French accent is très formidable.
Although the 52-year-old Willig has had substantial roles in movies like “We’re the Millers,” “Year One” and “Concussion,” it’s his recurring part as “Andre the Giant” that has received the most notice. Willig gained 35 pounds for the role to better simulate Andre’s girth and wears lifts in his boots to make him look closer to Andre the Giant’s listed height of 7-foot-4.
“This role has definitely been a nice crescendo for me,” said Willig, who is hopeful that “Young Rock” will soon be renewed for a second season. “I’ve always said that this acting thing is like climbing a ladder, and the ladder never ends. So it’s nice to get up a few more rungs.”
Other Panther players in show business
Willig played in 29 games for the Panthers in 2003 and 2004, starting nine of them, and also played in the 2003 Super Bowl for Carolina as a reserve. He has joined a small group of former Panthers who have dabbled in show business. Most, however, barely saw the field.
Ryan Sutter literally had a 10-second career with the Panthers; he dislocated his shoulder and never played again for Carolina while trying to make a tackle on a kickoff in 1998. But Sutter later became the final pick of “The Bachelorette” Trista Rehn in the show’s wildly popular first season, with the two getting married in a lavish TV wedding in 2003.
Bill Goldberg, later known as the pro wrestler “Goldberg,” was briefly on the Panthers in 1995 after being taken in the expansion draft. Goldberg became the team’s first-ever cut before the Panthers even got to training camp. Most recently Matt James, who was once in a rookie minicamp with the Panthers but also never played in a game, was “The Bachelor” in the show’s 2021 season that just concluded in controversy.
Other former NFL players have also had notable success in film and TV, including Jim Brown, Merlin Olsen and Alex Karras. And “Andre the Giant” himself had a major role in the classic film “The Princess Bride,” playing, of course, a giant.
Willig has carved out an acting career that now rivals his 14-year NFL career in longevity. He grew up in California and went to Southern Cal, where he once was a roommate of Junior Seau’s.
An undrafted free agent, Willig played for six teams in his 14-year career, winning a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams before coming to Carolina in 2003 and serving as a backup at offensive tackle behind Jordan Gross and Todd Steussie.
“Matt was a great teammate,” said Kevin Donnalley, who started at offensive guard on the 2003 Panthers’ Super Bowl team. “He was tough as nails on the field, but genuinely goofy off of it. Everybody on the team absolutely loved him. He’d play air guitar and sing songs on the radio — didn’t matter what genre. He did great impressions, too.”
In 2003, the Panthers played a critical regular-season game against Indianapolis and Peyton Manning. Willig and Donnalley got to the game hours early and noticed a walk-in ice chest on the way to the locker room — a larger version of the type that you see in a large grocery store holding bags of ice.
As other Panthers arrived at the stadium, Willig crawled inside the ice chest and hid in there, startling one player after another as they walked by. Sometimes, the glass would fog up, and Willig would slowly wipe it clean, exposing his face to shocked teammates.
“He must have been freezing in there, but it sure injected some levity,” Donnalley said. “Coincidence or not, we won that game. Even then, I would have told you Matt was going to succeed as an actor. He was doing some commercials even back then. I’m pretty fascinated by his career — I mean, the guy is on a show with ‘The Rock.’”
Johnson plays himself in “Young Rock,” although in the show he is running for president in 2032. The show is then told in a series of flashbacks into Johnson’s past, with three different young actors playing Johnson at various stages of his life.
Johnson lived in Charlotte briefly as a child, attending Montclaire Elementary and once beating up a bully there (so he’s said). But the series has no overt connection to the Queen City. The show is set in Hawaii, Miami and Pennsylvania and was filmed mostly in Australia. The Rock’s real-life connection to Andre the Giant comes from his father, Rocky Johnson, who was a pro wrestler and a contemporary of Andre the Giant’s.
Willig knows that the series won’t last forever for him, even if it runs for many years.
“There’s a shelf life to this particular series for me,” Willig said, “because Andre died in 1993, when The Rock was about 20.”
Andre “The Giant” Roussimoff and Willig had another thing in common — they both loved North Carolina. Willig said he “loved everything about Charlotte.” Roussimoff made many wrestling forays throughout the Carolinas in the 1970s and eventually bought a ranch in Ellerbe, N.C., about 80 miles east of Charlotte. When Andre the Giant died, his ashes were scattered around the ranch.
Willig’s costly Panthers penalty
Here’s the story of Willig’s most humiliating moment with Carolina. In 2004, the Panthers were on the road, facing the Denver Broncos. Willig started at right tackle, as he did nine times that year.
Trailing 20-17 with 6:53 to go, Carolina faced a fourth-and-9 and sent John Kasay out for a 42-yard field-goal attempt that would have tied the game.
However, before the field goal was tried, a different offensive lineman false-started. The official who threw the flag accidentally hit Willig with his throw, and this irritated the big man.
“I turned around and threw the flag back, just kind of chucked it,” Willig said. “And it went right in the direction of the referee.”
Tweet! That drew another flag, for 15 more yards.
The field-goal attempt had gone from 42 to 47 yards to — due to Willig’s penalty — 62 yards. Panthers coach John Fox, who would sternly call the penalty “bone-headed” in his postgame press conference, thought Kasay couldn’t make it from 62 and chose to punt. The Broncos then ran out the game’s final 6:42 with a time-consuming drive.
“I remember distinctly standing up in the locker room and taking the blame,” Willig said, and press reports from the time bear out that’s exactly what he did. “I felt like I was directly responsible for losing that game. It was pretty awful.”
I covered the 2004 Panthers, who finished a disappointing 7-9 a year after making the Super Bowl. I had forgotten the penalty. But Willig never did.
“Sometimes in a chat room or a forum where my name gets brought up,” he said, chuckling, “some of the fans can be pretty mean. Just because of that one thing. When you’re a vagabond player like I was, it’s pretty easy for people to bash you a little bit.”
Willig is the one doing the bashing now. As Andre the Giant, he gets hit with a chair during a wrestling “Battle Royale” in Tuesday night’s episode but doesn’t go down, instead throwing people all over the place. His best moments, though, are quieter ones with the young actor portraying Dwayne Johnson as a boy. It makes you think that Willig could do even more, given the chance.
What’s next?
“I don’t think in terms of being a star of a film or a show,” Willig said. “Would it be lovely? Absolutely. I wouldn’t turn it down. But I think being a consistently working actor is really my goal. To be on a series like this. Just to keep going, you know?”
