Casey Affleck has faced quite an array of ping-pong opponents, but his biggest adversary so far was an NFL legend.
The Oscar-winning actor got to square off against Rob Gronkowski on the set of “The Instigators,” a new heist movie for Apple TV+ coming out this summer starring Affleck and Matt Damon. Gronk, who makes a cameo in the film, spent a single day on set and presented Affleck with a new challenge.
“A big part of my game is hitting the corners,” Affleck said in an exclusive NBC sitdown interview with Olympic medal-winning fencer Miles Chamley-Watson. “Gronk showed up … there were no corners. He just seemed to loom over the whole table.”
While Gronk may have had the size advantage, Affleck ultimately had the skill advantage.
“I beat him, but it wasn’t easy,” he said.
Gronk isn’t the only one to fall to Affleck in table tennis on a movie set. The Falmouth, Massachusetts, native has made a habit of dominating his co-stars and other crew members.
“I play a lot of ping-pong,” Affleck said. “I beat everyone on set.”
One place where Affleck has met his match is his local YMCA. He said he hones in one his game in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, where his competition is mostly older Korean women who are on a completely different level.
“They just kill. They’re destroying,” Affleck said. “When they tried to teach me how to do it, it’s completely different. You hold the paddle different, you play different, so it’s learning a whole new game. It’s not just about getting better at the ol’ basement ping-pong.”
The top table table players in the world will descend upon Paris this summer for the 2024 Olympics. When asked if he could ever reach the Olympic stage in any sport, Affleck said it would probably be between table tennis and a Winter Olympic staple.
“I think about it a lot. Is there still a sport that if I could dedicated my life, could I still maybe get to that level? And I’m pretty sure the answer’s no,” he said. “But, curling, maybe, and ping-pong. I couldn’t get there with ping-pong, but that would be the closest I could get.”
