Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: Stumble

Stumble: Brown & Dunbar Discuss Dimarcus, Peaches Arcs; Cheer Training

Stumble stars Jarrett Austin Brown and Taylor Dunbar spoke with us about finding Dimarcus and Peaches' voices and the show's physical demands.

Jarrett Autin Brown and Taylor Dunbar are naturals when they got cast in the Jeff and Liz Astrof NBC mockumentary series Stumble, combining their passions of acting and dance. Brown plays football-player-turned-cheerleader Dimarcus, and Dunbar plays the loner kleptomaniac-turned-cheerleader Peaches. The series follows Courtney Potter (Jenn Lyon), who is fired from her position as cheerleading coach at a local college and takes a job at a struggling community college, restoring its cheerleading program and filling the roster with misfits. Supporting her on this venture is her football coach, husband Boone E. Potter (Taran Killam), who still works at the school where she was fired. Brown and Dunbar spoke to Bleeding Cool about what they have in common with their series counterparts and keeping up with the physical demands of the series.

Stumble Stars Jarrett Austin Brown and Taylor Dunbar on Personal Inspirations for Dimarcus and Peaches, and If They Went Through Cheer Boot Camp

What do you like most about exploring Dimarcus and Peach's respective stories and arcs? Was there anything you took, aside from what was in the script, from your personal lives, that you infused in those characters?

Brown: There are so many things about Dimarcus that I love. We're in a mockumentary where it is fun, and it's comedy, but we also have those hard conversations. There's a moment in episode three, where he's being bullied by the [football] team, and he's like working through his masculinity, like what it means to be a cheerleader versus like a jock on a football team, discovering that, getting in there, opening that up, and having that conversation has been a privilege.

I grew up in a dance space where, and this was before TikTok was cool. Being a dancer, and being where I'm from, all the boys are playing basketball, throwing a football, and I'm in ballet class, so I know what that feels like to be like, "Hmm, am I taking the right path? Am I doing the right thing?" To be able to showcase that in front of the world and be like, "Yo, this is what this guy wants to do, and it's what he loves." For people to get behind him and root him at that moment, where the whole team's like, "Dimarcus and he's doing this whole celebration," like that's been a privilege and an honor, and I credit the writers so much for giving me that chance to do that.

Dunbar: The show does a great job of [showing that] caring is cool, like [it's] the most punk-rock thing you can do to give a shit. That really is the coolest thing you could do, and the show shows that heart so much. With the way Peaches is…Yeah, I had a shoplifting phase in high school, and I took lip liners from CVS and whatever. We all know this now, and I relate to her rebellious nature, but I don't relate to how she goes about things. I relate to her trusting who she is and knowing who she is, and knowing to be like, "I want this," "that's not okay," or "I will tolerate this much." She knows herself really well, and she is deeply troubled in the ways that she goes about it, but I think it's just a breath of fresh air to see anyone truly just be who they are, not feel ashamed about it, and want to be accepted. I love that you see her trust to be a part of a team and a community, and to reach out is great.

Given the physical nature of the show and the choreography, was there anything you guys had to prep for before filming? Was there a cheerleading boot camp? Or was it something more routine?

Dunbar: I didn't do any training physically, from the pilot episode to the second episode. I was like in the gym, learning TikTok dances at home, and being like, "Let me try to work myself as a mover," because I've been just on stage for so long, dancing and entertaining. I was watching and really got into Katseye, and liked their facial expressions and all that. It's such an art form, so we would have dance rehearsals, cheer rehearsals on weekends when we weren't shooting to practice a routine we were doing for the shoot, but we desperately would love to do a cheer boot camp like real with Monica [Aldama] and [choreographer] Dahlston [Delgado].

Brown: For sure, it would be amazing to do a boot camp with Monica and Dahlston. I'd probably give in in about 20 minutes and be like, "All right, I think I've had enough." But I can't stress how real our show is in the sense of like, "We as like actors go through similar things with the characters we're going through, where most of them never cheer before, and they're doing it on the day and figuring it out." That's what our show was like.

We'll have rehearsals, but we haven't had like boot camp, but we'll have rehearsals. Bootcamp, no joke, is literally being on set, like we have cheer-lebrities on our set that did this for their whole lives, so you get to just sponge up from them. We have Monica and Dahlston there all the time, so you're on set consistently working the muscle, even when in between takes, you're like, "How does this work? How do my arms feel so weak?" You're consistently doing the thing, so it's just like our show.

Dunbar: Literally.

Season one of Stumble also stars Anissa Borrego, Arianna Davis, Georgie Murphy, and Ryan Pinkston, is available to stream on Peacock.

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