If you are a fan of the Raiders and of comedy, you are going to want to head over to NBC or peacock to check out this week’s episode of Lopez vs Lopez. Because this week it’s LOPEZ VS RAIDER NATION!
Raiders legends Jim Plunkett and Marshawn Lynch star in the newest episode and you know wherever Marshawn goes, hilarity ensues. All that and Plunk too? Whaaaat?
I was intrigued by how such a thing came together, so I reached out to casting director G Charles Wright to give me the details. In the words of George Lopez himself ‘What had happened was…’
“Al Madrigal – one of our actors who plays Oscar – is a Raiders fan,” said Wright. “He showed some interest in wanting to do something that involved the Raiders.”
For that matter, George Lopez himself is well known as a Raiders fan. He’s been seen many times on the sidelines during games in his Raiders gear and even lit the Al Davis torch before a game in Oakland back in 2017.
With the Raiders fan connection well established, from there it was about figuring out who would be on the show. The first answer quickly presented itself.
You see, George Lopez is good friends with Marshawn Lynch aka Beast Mode who is an Oakland native and finished his NFL career for his now former hometown Raiders in 2017-18.
“The writers reached out to me and said ‘can we get Marshawn to play himself,’ Wright continued. “So I pitched the idea to his agent and his manager to have him appear as himself. . . And we talked about it, talked about what we wanted to do on the episode. Went over all that stuff with him, talked about how comfortable he is playing himself and what he’s comfortable doing and not comfortable doing. And worked an episode around that.”
This is where Plunk comes in…
“That all gets set and then Al Madrigal was at a Raiders game with his friends the Plunketts and he’s telling Jim’s daughter Meghan about Marshawn being on the show. And Jim says ‘That’s amazing, could I be on the show? Do you think they’d let me be on the show too? I don’t even have to get paid, I could just be an extra.’
“And Al brought that news to my writers and my writers reached out to me and said ‘Hey, we hear Jim Plunkett would like to do this and he doesn’t even want to be paid.’ And then I had to tell the writers that ‘Um, everybody has to be paid.’
“I worked out a deal with them and my writers wrote him in. As soon as we heard Jim wanted to do the show they figured out a role for him.”
It’s always crazy to think a show can come together like this. In much the same way a coach designs his scheme around his best players; something Marshawn and Plunk experienced firsthand in their legendary careers, with both being the centerpiece of their team’s offense on the way to championships.
With the two of them on the roster, I mean in the cast, it was time to put it on the field. Er, set, rather.
“Marshawn came in, Jim came in,” Wright said. “They flew in, we put them up at the same hotel, they hung out all day, they took the same private shuttle van from their hotel to the set. And just had a blast together all day during the show and signing autographs with our cast and crew and taking photos with them. It was great. . . Jim had never done anything like this before so it was all new to him and he really had a blast. . . And Jim got his SAG card!”
Chalk up another accomplishment for Jim Plunkett as he is now a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Though many believe there is still one accomplishment eluding the two-time Super Bowl winning QB. And you can best believe that made its way into the show. As Wright noted “They even made a joke in the script about how Plunkett should be in the Hall of Fame.”
The most recent episode of Lopez vs Lopez aired Tuesday night on NBC and is now also streaming on the Peacock app.