All About the First Actor with Down Syndrome to Lead an Action Movie: Race Eberhardt 'Has That It Factor'
The 37-year-old is the first actor with Down syndrome to ever lead an action movie, in the upcoming film Strait Undercover, produced by Fish & Crown Creative, according to the Today show.
"This is a story about an underdog USDA agent who dreams of doing something big with his career," a synopsis for the film reads. "He's the only one in his department with the guts to go undercover."
"His 'special ability' centers around his capacity to communicate with Earth's plants, a skill he takes for granted until it ultimately saves the day. 🎞️," it adds.
Fish & Crown President/Director Ben Gonyo, who directed Strait Undercover, spoke to Today in an interview that aired Wednesday, Jan. 29, where he said of Eberhardt, "He has that 'it' factor that when I see him on camera, I want to see more."
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Related: How 'Peanut Butter Falcon' 's Zack Gottsagen Didn't Let Down Syndrome Stop Him from Taking Hollywood
Eberhardt plays Race Strait, the protagonist of the film. And as Gonyo explained on Today, "The goal was to create a character around the real-life Race."
The filmmaker continued, "It wasn't to try to push him into a box, to be something. So we took his real-life essence and then wrapped a story around it."
According to the synopsis "Strait Undercover stars an actor with Down syndrome, but takes a refreshing approach by not focusing on Race's disability, intentionally omitting any mention of Down syndrome throughout the film."
"We're breaking away from the tradition of forcing actors with special needs to identify with their special need on screen," it adds.
"For us, it was very important to not make the story about the disability," Gonyo continued in his interview with Today. "What we see traditionally in films is that the characters on screen are forced to identify with their disability, almost as the reason they're on screen. I feel like that's a way that it used to be done, and we want to look forward and do it in a new way."
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Related: Adam Pearson Speaks Out Against How Actors with Disabilities Are Only Offered Certain Types of Roles: 'Lazy Writing'
The director also told Today that Strait Undercover "is an example of artists doing it differently."
"And maybe that can inspire other people and they can see, 'If you can see it, you can be it.' You know, that saying? Maybe that they can take something from that," he added.
For Eberhardt — who began acting at age 10, including in local productions of Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast — he now counts Race Strait as a "new hero" among other big-name action stars and characters like Chuck Norris, Tom Cruise and Jason Bourne (Matt Damon).
As for Gonyo, "He is a dream-come-true guy," Eberhardt said on the Today show, to which the filmmaker replied, "Both of our dreams comin' true."
Strait Undercover is slated for a summer 2025 release, and is available for preorder now at straitundercover.com.
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Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the final burst of Elvis Presley's creativity 48 years after his death
Two and a half years before he died, Elvis Presley sat on the floor of a walk-in closet at the Las Vegas Hilton and discussed a project that might have changed the course of his life. The meeting, as recounted by Presley's longtime friend Jerry Schilling, put the King of Rock and Roll face to face with Barbra Streisand, who'd come to see Presley perform at the Hilton in March 1975 then sought an audience after the show to float an idea: Would Presley be interested in appearing opposite Streisand in her remake of 'A Star Is Born'? At the time of the duo's conversation — Schilling says that he, Presley's pal Joe Esposito and Streisand's boyfriend Jon Peters squeezed into the closet with the stars in a search for some quiet amid the commotion backstage — it had been six years since Presley had last played a dramatic role onscreen; Streisand's pitch so tantalized him, according to Schilling, that they ended up talking for more than two hours about the movie. 'We even ordered in some food,' Schilling recalls. Presley, of course, didn't get the part famously played by Kris Kristofferson — a casualty, depending on who you ask, of Streisand's insistence on top billing or of the unreasonable financial demands of Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. (In her 2023 memoir, Streisand wonders whether the character of a self-destructive musician was in the end 'a little too close to his own life' for Elvis' comfort.) Whatever the case, Schilling believes that the disappointment over 'A Star Is Born' set Presley on a path of poor decision-making that effectively tanked his career before his tragic death at age 42 on Aug. 16, 1977 — 48 years ago this weekend. 'That was the last time I saw the twinkle in my friend's eye,' Schilling, 83, says of the sit-down with Streisand. An intriguing new box set commemorates the King's final burst of creativity. 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The Elvis industry has never not been alive and well over the half-century since he died; in just the last few years, we've seen Baz Luhrmann's splashy big-screen biopic, the latest book from the singer's biographer Peter Guralnick (this one about Parker) and not one but two documentaries about the so-called '68 comeback special that heralded Presley's return to live performance after nearly a decade of film work. More gloomily, 'Sunset Boulevard' arrives as Priscilla Presley — who got her own biopic from director Sofia Coppola in 2023 — is making headlines thanks to an ugly legal battle with two former business partners she brought on to aid in managing the Presley brand. (The feud itself follows the sudden death two years ago of Priscilla and Elvis' only child, Lisa Marie Presley.) 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New York Post
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