The first time Jharrel Jerome met Anthony Robles, he was terrified. Then 21-years-old, the actor (Moonlight, Monster) had recently been chosen to portray Robles—an NCAA-champion wrestler born with only his left leg—in a biopic of his life, but he had serious concerns about their meeting spot: a hotel weight room. Jerome, who had been inside a gym only 10 times in his life, felt out of place when the pair began to work out after shaking hands.
“When I saw him, the physicality was what was daunting to me,” Jerome says. “The gym is his world. I wish we met at a cafe or something and just had some food.”
For Robles, the meeting spot—his “comfort area”—was strategic and mostly a way to establish trust between them. Over the next 90 minutes, the pair exercised, lifted weights, and started to get on the same wavelength. They talked about their shared traits and beliefs and the meaningful relationships they had with their mothers, “how much we loved them and how much of a hero they were in our lives,” Robles says. “Little by little, that trust just developed organically into where I could just share things.”
Though Jerome got in a nice sweat (the first of many to come) and conversation that day, he couldn’t believe that one of the most dominant wrestlers in college history could be so encouraging, kind, and polite throughout their visit. “I was so confused. I’m like, ‘Isn’t this the most brutal wrestler? Isn’t this a champion wrestler?'” Jerome says. “That’s what I wanted to learn, what I wanted to attack—that duality. How can he be so monstrous and brutal on the mat, but so kind and protective off the mat?”
That’s one of the central tensions at play in Unstoppable (now available on Prime Video), William Goldenberg’s directorial debut and an empathetic portrait of Robles that highlights his physical limitations, dogged determination, and uncorrupted resilience. The movie is based on Robles’ own book, Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated. Published in 2012, it tracks his improbable journey from overlooked Arizona State walk-on to collegiate national champion. Buttressed by his mother Judy’s (played by Jennifer Lopez in the movie) unwavering faith, Robles has the kind of true story tailor-made for Hollywood.
To bring it to life, Robles embedded himself in both the writing and the wrestling, making sure Jerome captured his positive, unrelenting spirit and his unique athletic techniques at every crutch-assisted step. “It was nice to have my hands on this project from start to finish,” Robles says. “I knew that people were going to relate to this, and it was going to inspire them in some way.”
How wrestling changed Robles’ life
As a kid, Robles never considered himself disabled. Though he was born without a right leg (the cause of the condition is unknown), he referred to the missing appendage as his “challenge.” Instead of using a doctor-appointed prosthetic attachment at the age of 3, Robles opted for crutches, which helped him keep up with the neighborhood kids and his three younger brothers and younger sister. “I just have to give a lot of credit to my mom and to my siblings growing up,” Robles says. “They didn’t treat me any differently. They didn’t treat my missing leg as something that would hold me back in my life.”
The support in his early home life got him through a lot of adversity, especially when kids teased him and looked at him funny. Robles never retreated from the world, finding the courage to throw himself into the same activities as his peers without overthinking. That included riding a bicycle, which Judy fastened with pockets over the pedals so he could keep moving. Every day, he was determined to overcome similar challenges. “I would come home, just getting that recharge from them, saying, ‘I’m going to keep fighting. I’m going to figure this out,’” he says. “It was a puzzle. I just had to find the right pieces.”
When Robles was 14, the family (which included Robles’ stepfather, played by Bobby Cannavale) moved from California to Mesa, Arizona. That summer before ninth grade, his older cousin had pestered him to try wrestling. Eventually, he took Robles to one of his practices and let him watch. As Robles lifted weights on a side mat, the coach approached him and encouraged him to join the group. He was hesitant, but he knew getting on the mat would get his cousin off his back. “I got thrown around that first time, but I walked away with the biggest smile on my face and the biggest passion for wrestling after that,” Robles says. “I knew I wanted to be a wrestler from here on out.”
Robles loved the intensity, physicality, and mental toughness of the sport. “There’s no one that’s going to sub in for you,” he says. “If you’re getting beat, the coach can’t call a timeout and put someone else in to take your place. You have to figure it out.” Soon, wrestling became a way for him to take control over his life’s narrative, to change the perception others had of him. “Kids and adults were staring at me because I was different,” Robles says. “On a wrestling mat, I could focus and really force them to see me in the light that I saw myself.”
Initially, Robles remembers some opponents were hesitant to fully engage him on the mat. But that changed as soon as he “went full attack mode” and started earning everyone’s respect. After finishing with a 5-8 record his freshman year, things clicked as a sophomore, when he finished as the sixth-ranked wrestler in Arizona and realized he had the tools to be at the top of the podium. On cue, over his junior and senior years, he went 96-0 and won two state championships. “I couldn’t do the moves the same way that my teammates did,” he says. “I had to adjust. I had to change to my benefit. It was a matter of finding the right puzzle pieces with my coaches and just putting that time in.”
He followed a similar trajectory in college. Though numerous top choices (Iowa and Columbia) didn’t recruit him, he latched onto Arizona State’s program as a walk-on, earned All-American honors in his sophomore and junior years, and then went undefeated as a senior, beating Iowa rival Matt McDonough in the 2011 NCAA championship. “I’m grateful for him,” Robles says. “I was forced to bring my discipline, to bring my work ethic, my effort up a notch to be able to compete with him. He made me a better person all around. He made me mentally tougher.”
How Jharrel Jerome turned into the wrestler
A year after his championship victory, Robles published his experiences in an autobiography. It didn’t take long for producers Andy Fraser and David Crockett to fall in love with his story and hatch a plan to build a movie around it. Though it went through various phases, it eventually found forward momentum when Goldenberg agreed to helm the project. “He flew out to meet with my family and had dinner with us at home,” Robles says. “It was special for me to see his sincerity, and just how passionate he was about telling my story in a way that would make us happy and proud.”
Over the phone and in person, Robles then worked with writers John Hindman, Eric Champnella, and Alex Harris to provide helpful anecdotes, accurate wording, and flesh out the emotional beats of their script. “My family would read the scripts and we would give our opinions, and they would take those to heart and make changes,” Robles says. The wrestler was mostly concerned about maintaining a general authenticity as certain details of his life (the final score of his championship match, for example) got changed or condensed for dramatic effect. “We had to tweak certain things,” Robles says. “They cared about the true message and the things that were important to my family and me.”
The most important role Robles had? Getting Jerome to look like a one-legged wrestler. Thanks to pandemic and production delays, however, training turned into a long, grueling process. Jerome started his wrestling journey at the start of 2020, paused for two years because of Covid-19, re-engaged in a seven-month workout program, then stayed in shape an additional five months throughout the writer’s strike. “I felt like I was hanging by a string,” Jerome says. “I leaned on Anthony and he was always the reminder that there’s something so much bigger than me with this and I just gotta keep holding on.”
When they were on the mat, Jerome and Robles got into it. The actor started to learn with two legs, memorizing the basic terms, moves, and hand fighting techniques. They graduated to the floor, where Jerome got used to being on his knees and using his fists like a pair of legs. Then Jerome began memorizing the choreography behind the eight matches he knew he’d have to perform. At first, the actor felt delicate—he didn’t want to be picked up and thrown around. That eventually changed. “There was a point where I got slammed and I was popping back up and I was ready for the next round,” Jerome says. “It was learning the confidence of a wrestler. And that’s when I started to feel like Anthony.”
Of course, Jerome eventually had to disregard his right leg, which was later wrapped in a green cast so a visual effects team could erase it during the edit. “I wrestled on the ground with my right knee forward and my right leg was almost a tail just dragging back,” Jerome says. The costuming team also helped his cause, cutting the back of his leg sleeve so it looked like nothing was taking up space in the pants. “It was a little trickier in the moments where I’m on my crutches because I had to hike my leg back,” says Jerome, who practiced walking with crutches off set. “They gave me calluses. That was the hardest part. I had to take them everywhere.”
“It was basically just connecting the dots as we went, making sure we were comfortable before we moved on,” Robles says. “Over time, it was neat to see Jharrel completely forget that the leg was there.”
In addition to training Jerome and choreographing various wrestling scenes, Robles also acted as his stunt double, subbing in for sequences that didn’t require facial close-ups. “I didn’t have to hold back at all,” Robles says. “I could show everything that I could do, everything I was capable of because of how well he did out there.” Together they called their choreography a “violent dance” that pushed each of them into new directions. “It came out amazingly well,” Robles says. “I’m so proud of it.”
Why Robles shared his life story
Unstoppable isn’t just about wrestling. As detailed in his book, Robles grew up with a fraught domestic life, exacerbated when his stepfather walked out on the family. He chose not to be on set during some scenes, but he spoke with Jerome about channeling the right emotions, reactions, and feelings about these tense, sometimes violent situations during his teenage years. “I just remember telling myself, there’s someone out there that went through it, too,” Robles says. “Everyone as a family came together and said we’re OK sharing this part of our story. We’re OK revealing this scar to the world because it will touch people out there.”
That mindset manifests during a pivotal scene halfway through the movie, when Robles thinks about giving up wrestling after Arizona State’s wrestling budget gets cut. It’s not long before Judy hands him a bag of letters from kids around the country, expressing how much he’s become their inspiration in life. It’s a quiet scene, a tearjerker that gives Robles the motivation to keep going. Jerome felt like it unlocked the story’s bigger message—that Robles wasn’t just wrestling for himself anymore. “That’s a real moment,” Jerome says. “He still has those letters with him in a drawer.”
In the years after graduating college and publishing his book, Robles earned all kinds of honors and distinctions. He won the “Jimmy V” Award for Perseverance, and the Best Male Athlete with a Disability at the 2011 ESPYs. The next year, President Obama named him a member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition while the National Wrestling Hall of Fame awarded him its medal of courage. And he’s still embedded in the wrestling world, currently coaching at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona.
Watching the movie and depiction of his life, he says, has been “therapeutic.” It’s helped him look back at his journey gratefully, knowing that the challenges he overcame shaped his resolve as an athlete and as a person. “We have the tendency to go through something and we just focus on that negativity in front of us, the challenge,” he says. “When in reality, we have to remember all the things that are working in our benefit: the strength, the support that we have. I see this opportunity with the film as a way to reach people in their lives—to inspire them.”
