The Time Johnny Depp Dunked on DeMar DeRozan

All that glitters is not gold. The 4-time NBA All-Star learned that lesson the hard way, falling victim to a spitting-image impersonator. "He got upset but what can I do?" says Hollywood Johnny Depp about the incident captured by TMZ. And later, a UCLA golfer explains the "Hollywood miracle" the Bruins helped pull off with a young pimple-faced Shia Labeouf. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to another episode of Trickeration, the number one podcast
about deception and sports, also the only podcast about deception,
sports schemes, scams, hoaxes, trick plays, Franks. If there was
any sort of interesting trickery involved, you can bet we

(00:25):
are looking into it. As always, I'm your host, Matt,
bringing you these honest stories about dishonest acts each and
every week. Last episode was an interview with Gary, who,
as a New York City kid, ran a five year
scam pretending to be a Sports Illustrated for Kids reporter
to score interviews with some of the most famous athletes
in the world. And there's a whole archive of this

(00:47):
kind of nonsense, so poke around and catch up on
anything you may have missed. And this week is the
Hollywood episode, with not one, but two tales involving celebrity
A listers and sporty b lists and the pros and
cons of an impersonation done well. Yeah, I don't know

(01:10):
nothing about sports, letting know anything about basketball into Michael Jordan,
Kobe Bryant and that's it. Lebron, le Bron. I'm like,
I don't give a fuck. This is an Israeli man
named Ares and while I'm not sure how this claim
is verified, his Instagram lists him as the world's number
one Johnny Depp impersonator. This is pretty much my experience

(01:38):
with the mothers. And in two thousand and twelve, when
I came to Hollywood, my hair was long, I always
had jewelries. Then, I always had my style that I
guess people like, I don't think I look like Johnny
Depp then, but people freaked out and I was like, oh, ship,
this is Hollywood, and I actually build the character called

(02:01):
Hollywood Johnny Depp. Everywhere I go, I was dressed up,
you know, pull on Johnny Depp. My bill was like,
how he have my hat, my clothes, my makeup, everything
was like Johnny Depp. It's so funny because normally these
celebrity impersonators look like the people, but their voice is

(02:22):
totally different. But even if you didn't look like Johnny Depp,
you sound just like him. You have the same voice. Um,
this is the way I talk. My accent is like
because of the Israeli language, so I have the accent
and then mumbling and my deep voice. So when we speak,

(02:43):
we have the same tones, and this is what makes
people think I'm Johnny Depp. Everywhere I go, I get attention.
Of course I was younger, so I did like the attention.
The thing. The girls some places treat me like a celebrity,
free stuff, alcohol, free food. They gave me security of
the place to sit next to me so people don't

(03:05):
come to us for photos. I mean, I got the
attention that every person wants to get as person and
even a celebrity. So it was fun, you know. And
how did it work with girls who would think you
were Johnny Depp? At bars in around town, lots of girls.
They gave me numbers, They asked me, oh my numbers,

(03:28):
call me, text me, invited me to hotels like they said,
we looked like the most handsome, sexy whatever. And did
they wanna hook up with you because they thought you
were Johnny Depp or because they were just getting off
on someone who looked so much like Johnny Depp? The
second one I never told people and Johnny Depp, I
never wasn't a character of Johnny Depp. I just was

(03:49):
dressed up as Johnny Depp. Some girls like the idea
that they do look like Johnny that they know I'm
not Johnny Depp, but not everyone who met him knew
Hollywood Johnny Depp was not the real thing. Most famous
a certain NBA All star. We go back to in
August l a night on the Sunset Strip in two
thousand and fourteen. So my agency sent me to a

(04:12):
restaurant of Mr. Chawon Sunset. It's like a fancy restaurant
and I was there filming too. Full pop singer from Japan,
his name Yamappi. He's like the top Japanese idol, like
Justin Bieber here anyway, So the production from Japan came

(04:36):
and this Japanese idol they took him to a restaurant
to try American food and they told this idol Johnny
Depp over there and then came to talk to me.
And I did a good job, I guess, and I
tricked him. And when they ended the film, we went
outside and I saw lots of teams Z. I didn't

(04:59):
know if it's because of me, because I wasn't TMC
a few times, Oh, it's because of the job. Fanniese
Idol in a scene made for TMZ milling in the
same crowd outside the restaurant where Hollywood Johnny Depp, Japanese
Justin Bieber and the Raptors. DeMar de Rosen celebrating his
twenty five birthday with family and friends. The TMZ reporter

(05:21):
starts to stir the pot with the four time NBA
All Star. Yo Demorrow was man, happy birthday, sir, you
know that Johnny Depp came her birthday party. The camera
whips around and Eras about fifteen feet away, gives a
half wave. De Rosen is legit excited. The reporter, fully

(05:42):
aware this isn't the real Johnny Depp, keeps stirring with Tamar.
The six ft six de Rosen ambles over to shake
hands with Ares, wearing a white panama hat, sunglasses at night,
a spitting image of depth and ben. He wanted to
take a photo with me, and I'm like, okayyay. So
we took photos together, and we took pictures. We hang

(06:03):
out over there a little bit out of the restaurant,
and when they asked me, who's your favorite basketball player
on the NBA, it was like, he's on the NBA,
so him, Because yeah, I don't know nothing about sports,
I don't know them out they always and I don't know.
He's in the A B A and you know anything
about basketball. It wasn't like to meet Gerard Butler, Mark

(06:26):
Wahlberg like big stars that I actually know, Like he
was more excited to meet me. I guess then I
was excited to meet him. After the camp was down off,
everybody went home, and then like he was writing me,
you know do it was so amazing to meet you,
and I like, thank you, good luck in the games.

(06:48):
And then like five days later he post picture of
me and him. Immediately some of the resions over two
million Instagram followers flood the comments informing him he's been duped.
He took the picture off, and then he wrote me
like you O, man, what you did is bad because
I was so excited. I thought I got to meet

(07:08):
Johnny Depp. And I remember I owed him like, look, man,
you know our song happy Birthday. I'm happy we met
and hang out that night. Um, don't forget it's Hollywood.
You never know what you see something like that. And
did you feel bad at all about having tricked him? No,
because I did not trick him. I never said I'm

(07:30):
Johnny Depp. You know, I know when to say and
when not. This is my job, you know, like your
job to be a basketball player. My job is to
be Johnny Depp look like, So I didn't feel like
I need to tell them me. You guys are not
Johnny Depp, because you know what they enjoyed the night.
Why to win this for them? I know that they

(07:51):
could go home happy they met Johnny there. If they
figured it out later, good job. I guess he got upset,
But what can I do? We shift to another story
involving actors and athletes and impersonation so good that audiences
everywhere were fooled. Telling this story is Steve Conway, the

(08:11):
U c l A Bruins golfer from two thousand to
two tho four. Being at U c l A, we
would see a bunch of celebrities over the years. A
lot of these celebrities, they're obsessed with playing golf, and
when we were practicing at the courses, and a lot
of them would want to come over and try to
pick our brain. And then for us, it was kind

(08:32):
of cool to be sitting there, you know, college student
just hanging out with a couple of celebrities having kind
of a regular conversation. So who was coming over. Oh,
there was a bunch. Kurt Russell was one that was
pretty funny. Everybody grew up trying to hit the ball picker,
right the guy in the little cage trying to pick
up all the balls, and that was always fun. Trying

(08:53):
to hit a moving target. There's one afternoon, right as
the sun was starting to set, sometimes the deer would
come out of the hills and all of a sudden,
he starts trying to hit the deer with the golf
balls like it was hunting or whatever. I'm like, I
don't know if we should be doing that. In two
thousand three, pre production was starting on a golf movie

(09:14):
set in about the first amateur to win the US Open,
a twenty year old named Francis. We met cast to play.
We met with Shia le Buff, but there was one problem.
Le Buff had never picked up a golf club before. So, um,
I believe Mark Frost. He's the guy who wrote the
book The Greatest Game Ever Played, And I think he

(09:34):
called our coach and said, hey, you know, we're going
to make this movie and Shya needs some help trying
to look like a professional golfer. Our coach asked us too,
you know kind of mentor him and try to help
him out, and you know, we were willing to spend
some time with him. And I mean it wasn't much
skin off far back, and how well known was shy
a le buff At this point at the time, none
of us knew who he was. But then I told

(09:56):
my sister and she knew who he was. She's like,
oh my gosh, he was on Disney Channel. That's so
cool and all this stuff. So that the day comes, um,
the first time we met Shia and he met us
over on the shipping green over at Mountain Gate Country Club,
and I think he was fifteen or sixteen years old
at the time, but he was pretty short, like young
and kind of scrawny kid. He was kind of like

(10:18):
pimple faced and kind of just looked out of place.
He didn't even really have like golf clothes on. I
think he had like some cargo pants on. And we
start talking to him and we're like, okay, let's you know,
see you try to hit a ball and see kind
of what what's our starting point. Shaya places the ball
in the tea, he grips the club and takes a swing.

(10:43):
Describe me what shyl la Bouf swing looked like when
you first saw it, it just looked very unathletic and weak.
Like I said, it is somebody who had never played
baseball before, never been um, never done anything athletic, and
Shaya I don't think had ever played a sport before.
He literally looked like the least athletic person I have

(11:05):
ever seen. We kind of look at each other and
like they already gave this guy the role, Like you're
telling me the auditions are done. So we sit there
for five minutes trying to teach him and we're like,
oh my god, this is hopeless, and we're just like,
you know, we need to talk to Mark Frost and say, hey,
you're going to be in a way better spot if
you just try to teach the pro golfer how to act.

(11:28):
There's no way you can teach this actor how to
look like a golfer. Like this is gonna be impossible.
You know, it's gonna probably ruin the movie. We were
all convinced, like this is going to be a disaster.
The bruined golfers relayed their concerns to Frost and a
producer of the film, and they said the one thing
was the ball is h like a C G I ball.

(11:50):
He might hit a golf ball, but they edited out
and they edit in the ball through the computers and stuff,
so he didn't have to hit a good shot. He
just had to wing and look like he had hit
the shot. And even that we're like, oh, this isn't
gonna look good. Golf is a tough sport and there's
a hard thing to fake unless you grew up playing
the game. It's pretty hard to come off as kind

(12:12):
of a natural. There's no way to hide it. Over
the years, there have been a few movies portraying golfers
Caddy Shack, Happy Gilmore, but the most notable attempt by
a Hollywood actor portraying a seasoned pro was Kevin Costner
in film Tin Cup. But you can float out tell

(12:33):
that he's not a professional. It just doesn't come off
as as very authentic. And there's a lot of things,
like I said about coming off authentically as a golfer.
Even the way that you tee the ball up, the
way that you picked the ball out of the hole.
You can just kind of tell if somebody's used to
doing that or if it's kind of a new new thing,
and how much time did you guys end up spending

(12:54):
with Shaya? So I can't even remember how long it
was that we first met with him. That I think
was he maybe stayed there for an hour and took
a few videos of us hitting balls just to see
that our pre shot routine and stuff like that, Adham
and ask questions. He came up and watched us play
a tournament at Stanford's golf course. He had a little

(13:14):
camcorder and took little videos that he said he was
going to go back and study. And as you know,
golfers kind of have certain mannerisms, just kind of the
way they stand there, the way they lean up the club,
and so he was going to try to basically impersonate
some of our mannerisms. Despite the Bruins golfers concerns, production
of the film went ahead with Shaya in the lead role.

(13:36):
About two years later, the movie came out and a
few of us on our team watched it. We didn't
think there was a prayer of this looking normal, and
we were like, holy cow, they actually did an incredible
job of making it look authentic, and it was actually
one of the better done golf movies that I've seen.
And I would consider myself a pretty big skeptic on

(13:58):
a lot of the golf movies that are up there.
Once he was out there with the knickers and the
I guess the Tamas Shanter hat, it looked incredible. It
was like a miracle of Hollywood. In interviews promoting the film,
Shaya credited the u c l A Golf team with
helping him kick off his training, which he said lasted
seven hours a day, seven days a week for six months.

(14:22):
He did a great job, and it goes to show you.
I think he's actually a pretty professional actor and was
able to mimic these things. And you know the fact
that he set out on the mission to try to
look like a better golfer is pretty impressive. So test
testament to him for pulling it off. And in a

(14:45):
delightful press nugget after the film, Shaya took aim at
another famous actor for his portrayal of a pro golfer, said,
buf no golfers like Bagger Vance because Matt Damon trained
two weeks to get his swing correct. M All right,

(15:06):
that is it for today. Thank you too, Arras and
Steve for sharing their stories. Thanks to the Trickeration Nation
for listening and sharing the episodes with people who like
this kind of thing and don't forget to like and
subscribe on iTunes. If you have ideas for future apps,
please hit the tip line at Trickeration Nation at gmail
dot com or follow along on Twitter and Instagram at

(15:28):
trickeration And as we do every week, we check in
with the legend Chris, Matt, Doug Russo, Chris, how do
we do this week? Maddie, good job, keep up to
good work. Thanks Chris, all right, talk to you next week.
Trickeration is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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(15:48):
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