Rob Corddry knows exactly what the bathroom at CBGB’s looks like. So when he logs onto our call and immediately compares my backdrop to punk-rock bathroom graffiti, we’re off to the races. Mary Stuart Masterson chimes in with a quick jab of her own, and suddenly this interview about a football film starts like a lost scene from a 90s alt-comedy. Which feels just right.
The film is The Senior, the true story of Mike Flint—played by Michael Chiklis—who returned to college football at 59 to finish the senior year he never got. It’s part sports movie, part redemption drama, part “what in the actual hell is this man doing,” and Corddry and Masterson each play people forced to confront the madness head-on: Corddry as the coach who has to make sense of a 59-year-old walk-on, and Masterson as the wife trying to stop her husband from getting flattened on a Texas football field.
Neither of them knew the story going in. “It was everywhere,” Corddry says, baffled that he missed it the first time. Masterson agrees: “How did I miss this?” But both had the same reaction once they looked it up—this cannot possibly be real. And yet it is. The film leans into that tension, letting the audience discover the absurdity and the sincerity at the same time.
That sincerity gets a Texas-sized boost from the setting itself. “We shot on this huge beautiful field,” Corddry says, “and you immediately think, ‘college.’ But no—high school.” Masterson laughs. “Thousands of seats. They gave it to us because it was off-season. Otherwise forget it.” She’s no stranger to Texas football mythology herself, recalling Thanksgivings where nobody could eat until “the stupid ball game” was over.
But despite the underdog beats, The Senior isn’t content to be just another inspirational sports flick. Masterson points out the deeper layers baked into the story: finishing what you start, faith, family, and all the emotional shrapnel that comes from revisiting unfinished business. “It’s got all the things,” she says. “And the football is shot so well.” Even my own wife wandered into the room during the film’s final stretch only to find me tearing up. Sports movies will do that. They’re emotional pickpockets.
Then there’s the added twist: Corddry and Masterson are both playing real people. People who are on set. People who can yell “boo” if they don’t like what you’re doing. “That was intimidating,” Masterson admits. She recorded her real-life counterpart’s voice, studied her accent, and then discovered she’d be acting scenes with the woman watching from behind the camera. “They were wonderful,” she says. “Very supportive. They just cared about the truth of the relationship.” Corddry nods. “They wouldn’t have been there if they had a problem with it.”
But portraying real lives in a film requires controlled distortion. “Biopics have to compress timelines,” Masterson says. “You take licenses to make the movie work as a movie.” And yet, ironically, The Senior is truer to life than most—many scenes actually happened almost exactly as shown. Which surprised Corddry: “You can be pretty sure what you’re watching is very true to life.”
Corddry’s casting is another curveball. Most audiences know him as an unhinged comedic presence—Hot Tub Time Machine, Children’s Hospital, The Daily Show—so to see him as the furrow-browed, put-upon coach is a tonal shift. “I really enjoyed doing it,” he says. “It’s so different from what I’m usually asked to play.” The filmmakers wanted some levity, yes, but Corddry ended up grounding the humor instead of leaning into it. “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” he says. “I was just reacting to the insanity that walks into his office.”
And there is a lot of insanity. The coach has to figure out how to let a 59-year-old take up a roster spot without completely upending the team’s future. “It’s about sharing that inspirational role,” Masterson says. “It takes a big man to do that.” The arc lands harder because it breaches a territory few sports movies bother with: a tenderness between two traditionally masculine Texas men. “Unseated toxic masculinity,” Masterson calls it. “Not usually what you see in a football movie.”
But The Senior also opened a door for Masterson to talk about something most viewers never consider: the disconnect between making a film and the film the audience eventually sees. “Your experience of making it is one thing,” she says. “It has nothing to do with what the audience experiences from it.” On set, she’s building relationships, navigating emotional beats, trying to honor the real people behind the characters. But the audience? They only see what the filmmakers put on screen. “Those are two separate things,” she says. “The movie that exists for the viewer is completely different from the one you lived.”
By the end, the film delivers the emotional punch most sports stories promise but rarely earn. And Corddry and Masterson deliver performances that thread absurdity, vulnerability, and that sweet spot where real life sneaks up on you with a lesson. Or at least with tears in your eyeballs.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
