‘I was just trying to get a seat at the Hollywood table’ … Jake Johnson. Photograph: Robby Klein/Getty Images North America View image in fullscreen ‘I was just trying to get a seat at the Hollywood table’ … Jake Johnson. Photograph: Robby Klein/Getty Images North America Film Interview ‘New Girl was so scary I had to stop smoking pot’: Jake Johnson on perseverance, pickleball and Prince Rebecca Nicholson As Nick in the blockbuster TV comedy, the actor was adored by millions. So will his new comedy The Dink, which he jokes is a ‘sexier Challengers’, make him even more popular?
Tue 21 Jul 2026 06.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Y ou might assume that Jake Johnson would know a little something about pickleball. The actor is starring in The Dink, a sort of spiritual heir to Dodgeball – it has a Ben Stiller cameo – and he plays Dusty Boyd, a former tennis pro turned plucky pickleball upstart. Presumably Johnson took the gig because he has a deep love of the sport, a fondness for its pockmarked balls and weirdly smooth paddles? “No experience of it whatsoever,” says the actor, cheerfully, on a video call from Los Angeles.
Yet this underdog of a racket sport, loved by retirees, found him anyway. At the climax of the movie, Dusty must play against an old foe, which meant Johnson had to undertake months of real-life training in pickleball and tennis, so it looked as if he could play. “It was like WWE. They call it fake wrestling. The outcome is there, but you still have to wrestle. That was probably the most stressful part of the film to me.”
The Dink came to Johnson through its writer, Sean Clements, who had taken up the sport. “He started playing pickleball, and then became friends with this group of older women in Beverly Hills. He’s like, they talk so much shit, and get so competitive, it’s just so funny.” At the time, Johnson was searching for a specific kind of comedy. “I was looking to do something really fun and light, with big comedic set pieces. I wanted to make a movie that feels a little old school, there’s no messaging, it’s not trying to teach people anything.” It was just before the 2024 presidential election in the US. “I knew, however that goes, it’s going to get crazy for our country, and it’s going to be very divisive, and the internet is going to get all mad at each other about everything, and we’re all going to be fighting,” he says.
The Dink was born from a desire to escape, if just for a moment. “I thought, if I’m going to make something, I don’t want to throw more wood on to that fire. You could say the world is burning, and you have so much great evidence. But can we just talk about this, for an hour and a half? Because while this is going on, there’s also life.”
There is no denying that culture has taken on a new intensity in recent years. From Marty Supreme to One Battle After Another , movies and television are heightened, brittle and usually immensely stressful to watch. “You go: man, I know everybody is loving this, and it’s winning all the awards, but I can’t watch it. I’m already fucking stressed. Give me a break!”
The Dink is that break. Dusty is “a goober”, according to Johnson. He works at his father’s country club and remains bitter about the injury that ended his promising tennis career, for which he blames Andy Roddick. When Dusty takes up pickleball, he joins a tough-talking, hard-hitting gang of older women, led by Mary Steenburgen’s Candace, who schools Dusty in sport and life. In a par…