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Mild spoilers below forMarvels Luke Cage.
Ask Cheo Hodari Coker which sports teams he roots for and youd better buckle up.
So its no surprise that he regularly tunes into a certain cable channel.
Im a huge ESPN watcher, Coker says.
That love comes through in full force in the new season ofLuke Cage.
The second episode features cameos from not one, but two ESPN correspondents: Michael Smith and Jemele Hill.
Whats more, it also includes an appearance from New York Jets head coach Todd Bowles.
On top of that, the fourth episode features a segment with ESPN anchor Stephen A. Smith.
Of course, ESPN and Marvel Entertainment share a parent company in the form of Disney.
The ESPN cameos were Cokers idea, and part of the motivation for them came from professional admiration.
He used to be a music reporter and, as they say, game recognizes game.
As a young black journalist, you tend to watch other black journalists your age.
He also felt it also made sense for the logic of the season.
There was one wrinkle.
The NFL, of course, is so persnickety about their brand, Coker adds.
Theyre even more persnickety either than Marvel or Netflix.
Ergo theHarlemJets, as opposed to the East Rutherfordbased ones.
They still snagged Bowles from the real-life Jets to coach Luke, but he wasnt Cokers first choice.
I was going to ask [Stanford University head coach] Dave Shaw to maybe cameo, he says.
It seemed like a match made in heaven, given that Shaw and Coker were college roommates.
So, at first, we talked to Herm.
It got relatively close, but he doesnt live in New York anymore.
It didnt line up quite right.
Equally complicated were the wranglings with the ESPNers.
The initial process of grabbing their interest wasnt too hard, thanks to the magic of social media.
Ive become friends with both Michael and Jemele on Twitter, Coker says.
So I was like, Hey, would you guys want to make a cameo onLuke Cage?
And they were like, Are you kidding me?
Coker has friends in ESPNs directing staff who opened up a line of communication with everyones agents.
But thats where things became complicated.
But then the personalities wont do it unless they read the scripts.
So he opted to contact Hill and Smith and give them the gist of their scenes.
At that point, its a black thing, he says.
Its like, Brother, yknow, Im gonna flip this to you so you might see this.
If you like it, hey do it.
If you dont like it, then like dont leak this.
But its not official.
It cant go through agents.
With all the confidentiality, its always really hard.
The strategy worked and the pair said yes.
They were very good at taking the script and saying, Okay, how would we say this?
We basically wrote it in his style, not quite in his voice but pretty close, Coker says.
So then it was just a question of making it work for him.
Ovearll, Coker seems giddy while talking about his sporting adventure.
Thats due in no small part to the medium that he and ESPN share.
Television is so intimate, he says.
You get to know them after a while.
His final assessment is as simple as Lukes physique is impressive: It worked really well.
