When Jake Johnson signed on for the new pickleball comedyThe Dink, he had a simple creative goal: he wanted to make something light, fun and completely unpretentious. He re-teams with director Josh Greenbaum for a film that feels like a classic, feel-good comfort movie, which is now streaming on Apple TV+.
The Dink follows Dustin “Dusty” Boyd (Johnson), a former tennis prodigy who flamed out as a teenager during a match against Andy Roddick. Now he coaches children at the suburban country club owned by his hyper-demanding father, Chuck (Ed Harris). Both Dustin and his dad despise pickleball, viewing it as an insult to traditional tennis, until Dustin is forced to learn the sport, and earn his father’s approval.
RIGHT: Jake Johnson in “The Dink.” Photo Courtesy of Apple
For Johnson — who recently stepped behind the camera to write, direct and produce his own feature — returning to the acting chair for The Dink was the project that reignited his passion for the craft.
“What I wanted was to make something that felt like the equivalent of yacht rock, where it was easy listening and enjoyable, and it wasn’t going to challenge you, or it wasn’t trying to be something that it wasn’t supposed to be,” Johnson says. “That was the goal of this project, and I loved how it turned out.”
Johnson views The Dink as a vital revival of Hollywood’s disappearing “middle class” of movies. “This type of movie, this kind of mid-budget tier, is going away in Hollywood,” he notes. “A movie that you could watch with your kids or you could watch with anybody, and it’s just fun… That is reminiscent to me of a tone of New Girl or a sitcom where if you like it, you can watch it more, and it’s meant to feel good.”
“I feel like those movies, which I loved and I love, have been leaving our business — which I think of as the middle class of movies. So, [The Dink] felt like a perfect chance to do another one of those.”
Prior to The Dink, Johnson had taken on the triple-threat role of writing, directing, and starring in his own feature film, Self-Reliance. The Dink served as his first acting gig back after that long stint behind the scenes (alongside his supporting role in Apple TV’s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed), and the shift in responsibility was an immediate relief.
“I had been in love with [acting] for a lot of years, and then I was getting a little bit burnt out… The Dink was my first job back in a long time, and having Sean, the writer, who was such a funny writer, and getting to set and having great jokes and a great story, and having Josh give direction that made the performance better and better. It just felt like, ‘Oh, I love this! I forgot how much joy this brings.’”
On paper, playing Dusty — an aging prodigy navigating shifting career eras — might seem like a role ripe for personal reflection, especially for an actor currently navigating his own shifts into writing and directing. Surprisingly, Johnson reveals that his secret to enjoying acting again was doing the exact opposite of drawing from his personal life.
“When I was about four years old, with my brother […] We had a dream together, and we didn’t know what that dream was. I feel like I’m still just living that fantasy.”Jake Johnson
“I didn’t feel any personal connection with Dusty… and I think I’ve been falling in love with acting [because] I’m not feeling personally connected,” Johnson says. For him, the thrill lies entirely in the technical and emotional exercise of stepping into someone else’s skin on set.
“It’s just really enjoyable to try to dissociate enough that on those days and in those scenes, I’m trying to feel what they feel and make it feel real. But when I’m leaving work and driving home, I’m not feeling any connection to their arc, but I’m loving the day of doing the scenes.”
At the heart of the film’s emotional core is the dynamic between Johnson’s character, Dusty, and his father, played by four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris.
Off-screen, the process of winning over a cinema titan mirrored the narrative on screen. “I think it was a real honour because he’s a real actor-actor,” Johnson recalls. “I loved his process. I loved how serious he took the scenes… I loved that he smokes unfiltered cigarettes off camera. I love how intense he is. I love that when he screws up a line, he’ll punch the table! It was very easy to play this dynamic of his son, who’s very different from him, who sees life differently, but wants his approval because we stepped into that in real life, in that Sean [the writer], Josh, and I all wanted Ed to like us.”
While the emotional stakes belong to Harris, some of the film’s most absurd, high-octane comedy moments came opposite producer and co-star Ben Stiller. When asked about filming scenes involving Stiller’s wildly unhinged monologues, Johnson admits his usual professional composure completely crumbled.
“I think the younger me would say, ‘Keep going, man! Don’t take it for granted.’”Jake Johnson
“As an actor, I pride myself on not breaking, because if you break, it ruins the scene,” Johnson explains. “Those scenes with Ben were… I couldn’t help it. I ruined takes that were really good because we were both on camera… but he was just being so funny. All my tricks of biting my lip and doing mean self-talk, I was like, ‘It’s not working. This guy is at a level right now that I’m just not used to seeing.'”
When reflecting on what a younger Jake Johnson would think of his career today, the actor stays characteristically grounded by a passion for storytelling that began decades ago.
“I think younger me would just be really happy that I was still working and still loving it, because I never expected this journey to go on so long,” Johnson says. “This started when I was about four years old with my brother… We had a dream together, and we didn’t know what that dream was. I feel like I’m still just living that fantasy.”
He added: “So, I think the younger me would just say, ‘Keep working hard and don’t let this end, because once it ends, it’s gonna be really sad looking back and knowing that I had that great run for a while.’ I think the younger me would say, ‘Keep going, man! Don’t take it for granted.’”
By leaning into lighthearted stories, embracing the sheer absurdity with co-stars like Ben Stiller and Ed Harris, and letting go of the need to take his work home with him, he’s found a rare sweet spot in Hollywood.
The Dink is now streaming on Apple TV+.
FEATURE PHOTO BY JOE PUGLIESE, COURTESY OF APPLE.
