Mary McCormack hopes her new show Heels catches on as much as another revered sports-centric series once did.
Mary McCormack joined the cast of Heels for a Comic-Con @ Home panel and was asked if there were any misconceptions about wrestling that any of them wanted to dispel. McCormack (The West Wing, In Plain Sight) said she didn’t really know anything about pro wrestling at all prior to joining the show, but she fell in love with it and compared it to how she dove headfirst into watching Friday Night Lights. She explained that she wasn’t a football fan but ended up becoming a huge fan of that show, and hopes Heels has the same effect with fans now.
“I was never a fan of wrestling. My little brother was and he would sort of get on the top bunk and dive on me like Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka, right? So that was my only experience with wrestling, really. When I read the script and met that world, I was just so taken with it the same way I was taken with Friday Night Lights. It felt like wrestling was a way into this family drama,” she noted, “and for me that was really exciting.
“I remember when my husband was a huge Friday Night Lights fan and he’d said, ‘You just have to watch, just watch it!’ And I was so annoyed because I don’t care about football—sorry James [Harrison, former NFL star and her co-star who is on the panel]— I’m not going to watch that. And he said, ‘Please just watch one and if you don’t want to watch any more, you can get out.’ So I watched one and then became like a shut-in, stop parenting and seeing people, all of that. [laughs] I hope that’s what people feel like with this show,” McCormack said. “I certainly have no experience with the wrestling world and I’m in. I’m in on all of these characters and their relationships, their struggles, and that’s just what good dramatic writing is like. I’m excited about all kinds of people watching this show for that reason.”
Heels is set to premiere worldwide on Starz on August 15.
Related: Watch: STARZ Takes Fans Inside the Wrestling of ‘Heels’ With Behind-The-Scenes Featurette
