‘Winning Time:’ Delante Desouza On Embodying a Legendary Lakers Player for the Acclaimed HBO Series

Delante Desouza returns for the second season of HBO’s critically acclaimed Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. He stars as the legendary defensive player Michael Cooper. Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Desouza talks about the tremendous amount of work that goes into simply looking like a professional basketball player. He also details how taking the safer route of corporate America led him to return to acting. Plus, he mentions that we may even see him in a musical someday if the opportunity arises. First up, he’s craving the opportunity for some Diablo IV.

Editor’s Note: This interview was completed before 7/13/2023.

Awards Daily: What did you know about Michael Cooper before you auditioned for the role?

Delante Desouza: Actually that’s a pretty funny story. I auditioned for the show back in 2019 and I knew just a few basic facts about him: five time NBA champion, LA Lakers, Showtime played there with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But I didn’t really know too much about the origins of how he got on the team or what his origin story was. Until I started to dig deeper into him to play the character. I didn’t know he had a knee injury when he was a kid that almost derailed his career just before coming into the NBA and joining the Lakers. But for the most part I just knew the basic stuff from being a basketball fan. It was those intimate details that I found out and got to learn as I played the role.

Awards Daily: In doing that research was there something that surprised you or jumped out at you? Besides the knee injury?

Delante Desouza: I would say the most surprising thing to me was while doing my research was finding out that he was on the team in the 78-79 season, the year before Magic had even joined. But, because of his injury, he was on the injured reserve list his first year so he actually didn’t play in his first season. He got injured in the preseason. Which was really interesting to find out because we even reference it in the first season episode 4 where I think Nixon comes up and says, “Hold my bag, rookie.” Cooper says, “I’m not a rookie this year.” But he had never played a game in the NBA at that point. So that to me was one of the most interesting things was finding out Cooper was on the team a whole year, he just never played till the 79-80 season when Magic came on.

Awards Daily: In terms of you and as an actor you took a “safer route” career wise, getting a computer science degree. What made you finally decide to make the jump and try to become an actor?

Delante Desouza: That’s a great question, man. I would say it was really just knowing that I always wanted to do it but never following my heart and my intention with it. I’ve been doing theater since I was 14 I would say, but as I went through high school and college I had a knack for computers and tech. I figured since I was good at it, why not do that to make money? I always heard being an actor was tough, challenging, hard, and you don’t make a lot of money. I chose the safe route because I wanted to be financially stable, work on my career, and maybe acting was something I would just do for fun. But I always had that good feeling that maybe acting was what I was meant to do and computers wasn’t it. So I worked in software for a year and I realized that I just wasn’t happy where I was career wise, I wasn’t doing what fulfilled me. Being on stage, being in front of the camera– acting. So it really was a revelation for me after working about a year in corporate America that I didn’t belong there. The theater and the stage on the set is where I belonged.

Awards Daily: I read you did musicals a lot in your Baltimore community theater The Arena players. So are doing musicals in movies and television something you’re interested in?

Delante Desouza: [Laughs] Absolutely! That’s a really good question. I definitely will always have that theater bug within me. No matter how many TV projects I do I will always have an affinity and love for the stage. That’s where I came up, that’s what I grew up in. Especially musicals, that’s where I got my start in the world of acting. so I definitely wouldn’t mind doing a TV or movie musical. Definitely something on the radar for the future if the opportunity ever arises.

Awards Daily: What is the physical training like to make yourself look like a pro basketball player on screen?

Delante Desouza: Good question! So basically the way it works is we work with our trainer (whose name is Idan Ravin) for about 3 months before we start shooting. So during the show’s pre-production phase all the actors who play basketball will come in and train at a gym for an hour and a half to three hours a day, depending how close we are to production, for five days a week. That’s us basically working on passing drills, shooting drills, playing like our players–becoming silhouettes of the players we play essentially. That is the entire goal for those entire three months. Which also consists of us going on diets and getting into the shape that our players were in. For me specifically my diet is usually high protein, lots of vegetables, things like that. With the goal of losing about fifteen to twenty pounds within the three months. Because Michael Cooper is such a wiry, lean character, my diet is specifically dropping a lot of body fat just to become more muscle dense while also practicing basketball for about three months five days a week.

Awards Daily: Is basketball something you enjoy doing, at least with all that training?

Delante Desouza: Oh yeah, yeah for sure. The thing that’s really fun about this show is that because we practice together so much the team you see on the screen is actually the team in real life. Some of these guys are my closest friends both on and off the court, so it really becomes a Brotherhood when we’re in there training for those three months. We may have some hard days where we’re working on a complex play but it’s one of the best jobs I could ask for, working on this show. You know you get to play basketball and you get paid to do it; you can’t ask for more than that!

Awards Daily: Obviously the show is based on a true story and you are playing a real person. But going into season 2, was there anything particularly surprising or unexpected you found?

Delante Desouza: Oh, this is a great question! So season 1 we saw Michael Cooper coming into his own, finding his place on the team, and finding his worth on the team. But what was surprising in the second season was seeing the evolution of Cooper from some guy who’s barely making it on the team to becoming one of the cornerstones of Showtime. Because this season picks up right after the ’80s Championship and goes into 1984 against the Celtics, you get to see a huge evolution of Michael Cooper over those four years, which is really fun and surprising.

Awards Daily: This is a more off-the-wall question, but I read you’re a video game player and I wanted to see if you’re still making time to play video games?

Delante Desouza: Oh man, I am trying to. I am trying to find the time between the press run and things like that. I would love to play Diablo, I’ve got that on my radar. I’ve got the new Final Fantasy on my list. I have such a huge backlog of video games I need to get into. It is crazy.

Awards Daily: I can relate completely. Do you have any final thoughts?

Delante Desouza: I was just going to mention Winning Time will be back in August on Max. I think this season is going to be even bigger. I know people who loved the first season but the second season will be the first season times 100. It will be exciting to watch.

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