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    After Channeling Rob Gronkowski on TV, He’s Taking On ‘Travis Kelce’

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    The actor Laith Wallschleger was playing college football a decade ago. Now he’s playing some of the best tight ends in N.F.L. history.Before his current career as a stuntman, voice-over artist and actor, Laith Wallschleger was a defensive end at the University of Delaware. That college football experience came in especially handy this year, when Wallschleger portrayed onscreen versions of the tight ends Rob Gronkowksi and Travis Kelce, who have seven Super Bowl rings between them.Wallschleger drew praise, including from the actual Gronk, for his exaggerated capturing of Gronkowski’s jolly, party-loving demeanor in a few brief scenes in “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez,” the Ryan Murphy dramatization series on FX and Hulu about Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end who was convicted of murder.This week, Wallschleger will star in a Lifetime movie, “Christmas in the Spotlight,” as a fictional football player who is courting a pop singer. The film was loosely inspired by the real-life events surrounding the subtle but then not-so-subtle start of Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift.Wallschleger, 32, minored in theater in college and has known the Gronkowksi family for more than 10 years. In an interview, he discussed what it was like to play both athletes and how he hoped Swift’s passionate fan base would respond to his performance as a pretend Kelce.Excerpts from the conversation have been edited for length and clarity.Wallschleger as Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski in “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez.”FXHow did you prepare to portray Gronkowski given that you guys already have a personal friendship?Being such close friends over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time together, so I’ve seen a hyped-up Gronk, chill Gronk, maybe even moody Gronk and all the different shades. I listened to a lot of podcasts that he was on just to get the voice and the mannerisms down. He’s got an interesting voice. It’s like a cross between a Buffalo and New York twang, and he’s got a little bit of a lazy tongue, too, so it was tricky trying to get that down.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Norby Walters, 91, Dies; Music and Sports Agent Who Ran Afoul of the Law

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      He ran a highly successful booking agency, but his secret contacts with college athletes led to convictions (later reversed) for racketeering and fraud.Norby Walters, a booking agent for some of the country’s top disco, R&B, funk and hip-hop artists whose aggressive leap in the 1980s into signing college athletes to secret contracts before they turned pro led to legal problems, died on Dec. 10 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91.His son Gary confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.Mr. Walters found his footing in show business through his ownership of restaurants, pizzerias, mambo joints and nightclubs, including the Norby Walters Supper Club on the East Side of Manhattan, near the Copacabana, which he opened in 1966.He walked away from the club business two years later after a customer at the supper club, shot two mobsters dead in front of about 50 people.“Everybody hit the floor,” Mr. Walters told The New York Times in 2016. “And this guy was very calm about it. He sat down at the bar, put the pistol down and waited to be taken.”Mr. Walters closed the club soon after.He switched to booking musical acts into nightclubs, lounges and hotels, which proved lucrative. Over the next two decades, the client list of Norby Walters Associates (later called General Talent International) included Gloria Gaynor, Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle, Parliament-Funkadelic, the Commodores, Luther Vandross, the Four Tops, Run-DMC, Kool & the Gang, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy.In the early 1980s, Mr. Walters glimpsed a new opportunity in the top tier of college football players. With a partner, Lloyd Bloom, he established World Sports & Entertainment. From 1984 to 1987, the two men signed dozens of athletes to secret contracts that included inducements like cash, loans and cars in exchange for giving their agency exclusive rights to handle their future negotiations with N.F.L. teams, according to the 1988 federal indictment against them.Most of the inducements violated National Collegiate Athletic Association regulations and would have rendered the athletes ineligible to compete had their schools known about them. But Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom said their lawyers had assured them that the contracts were legal even if the players were still with their college teams.The indictment charged Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom with conspiring with the athletes to conceal the payments by having them agree to postdated contracts that appeared to have been signed after their last collegiate games.“The crime alleged that he conspired with students to steal their educations, which was preposterous, since the schools had little concern about whether they got an education,” Gary Walters said in a phone interview. He added, “Norby wasn’t doing anything different in the sports business than he did in the music business: giving fair compensation to players who had been denied it.”The government also charged that the contracts were backed by threats of violence, some involving the mobster Michael Franzese, a member of the Colombo crime family. When most of the athletes decided they did not want Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom to represent them but kept the cars and the money anyway, the indictment accused them of threatened to have their legs broken and threatened their families with physical harm.Gary Walters said his father denied having threatened anyone and also denied that Mr. Franzese had any involvement in his sports business.Mr. Walters and Mr. Bloom were convicted of mail fraud and racketeering in 1989. Mr. Walters was sentenced to five years in prison and Mr. Bloom to three, but neither served a day.An appeals court reversed the racketeering convictions in 1990, ruling that the trial judge had not instructed the jury that the two men’s actions had been guided by their lawyers’ advice that the signings were legal.In 1993, the mail fraud convictions were also overturned.“Walters is by all accounts a nasty and untrustworthy fellow,” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in the 1993 ruling, “but the prosecutor did not prove that his efforts to circumvent the N.C.A.A.’s rules amounted to mail fraud.”Mr. Bloom was shot to death at his home in Malibu, Calif., later that year.By then, Mr. Walters had retired from his music and sports businesses, which had been damaged by the federal investigation, and remade himself as the host of celebrity parties and poker games.Norbert Meyer was born on April 20, 1932, in Brooklyn. His father, Yosele Chezchonovitch, a Polish immigrant, served in the Army (where he changed his name to Joseph Meyer) during World War I and later became a diamond courier and the owner of a nightclub in Brooklyn and a sideshow attraction at Coney Island. His mother, Florence (Golub) Meyer, was a homemaker.“I traveled all over the country with my father’s freak shows,” Mr. Walters told The Daily News of New York in 1987. “It was all a scam. There were no freaks, the alligator boy was a poor fellow with a horrible skin condition, the girl with no body was done with mirrors, the turtle girl was a dwarf with a costume.”Norby studied business at Brooklyn College from 1950 to 1951 and served in the Army until 1953. He and his brother, Walter, took over their father’s club that year and renamed it Norby & Walter’s Bel Air.On opening night, when Norby greeted customers by saying, “Hello, I’m Norby,” some responded by asking, “Oh are you Norby Walters?” When the brothers stepped outside, they saw that the neon sign outside the club did not have the necessary ampersand. It said, “Norby Walters Bel Air Club.”“I’ve been Norby Walters ever since,” he told The Atlanta Constitution in 1987. “My brother hated me for it.” His brother, who became known as Walter B. Walters, died in 2004.Norby Walters carried the name — which he eventually changed legally — through his restaurant, club, music and sports careers, and into his final chapter.From 1990 to 2017, he organized an annual Oscar viewing party, which he called Night of 100 Stars, in hotel ballrooms in Beverly Hills. It drew stars like Jon Voight, Shirley Jones, Charles Bronson, Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau. He was also the host of a regular poker party at his condos in Southern California, where the regulars included Milton Berle, Bryan Cranston, Richard Lewis, Jason Alexander, James Woods, Charles Durning, Mimi Rogers and Alex Trebek.The final chapter of Mr. Walters’s life included a regular celebrity poker party. At one such party, the attendees included (standing, from left) his wife, Irene; his son Gary; the actors Dan Lauria, Lou Diamond Phillips and Bruce Davison; and Mr. Walters himself, as well as (seated) the actors Ed Asner, Mimi Rogers, Jason Alexander, James Woods and Kristanna Loken.via Walters Family“It was $2 a hand,” Robert Wuhl, the actor and comedian, said by phone. “So the most anybody lost was $250 and the most anybody won was $300 to $400. It was all about the kibitzing. Buddy Hackett would come to kibitz.”The Oscar party was not as hot a ticket as those hosted by Vanity Fair magazine or Elton John, but it was more accessible. In 2016, for $1,000 a seat or $25,000 for a V.I.P. table package, a civilian without show business credentials could be admitted and hang out with celebrities.In addition to his son Gary, Mr. Walters is survived by two other sons, Steven and Richard. His wife, Irene (Solowitz) Walters, died in 2022.Nearly 30 years after his legal problems caused him to retire, Mr. Walters said he understood his place in the Hollywood pantheon.“As I always say to my wife,” he told The Times in 2016, a few days before his penultimate Oscar party, “‘I used to be important.’” More

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      in Movies

      How the Drama of ‘The Blind Side’ Helped Sports Fans Look Past Questions

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      “The Blind Side” played on sports fans’ penchant for too-tidy narratives, our columnist writes. A legal battle between the N.F.L. player and the family depicted in the film seeks to answer questions the dramatization looked past.Michael Oher, center, filed a lawsuit against Sean Tuohy, left, and Leigh Anne Tuohy, right, over their conservatorship of his business affairs.Matthew Sharpe/Getty ImagesOf course America loved “The Blind Side,” the 2009 movie about a homeless and hapless Black teenager rescued from a bleak future by a wealthy, white family. It was based on the true story of the Tuohy family, led by Sean and Leigh Anne, who took the future N.F.L. player Michael Oher into their home and raised him proudly as he made it to college and beyond.It’s the type of story we’re used to in sports, one that undergirds our beliefs about sport’s power to create lifelong bonds, help its participants overcome hardships, and build character. It’s also a simplified rendering of race in America, one that hinges on the trope that white people can be magically redeemed by coming to the aid of a Black character.Audiences sucked it up. The film took in over $300 million and Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy, self-possessed belle of the New South.But “The Blind Side,” based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis, renders a complicated reality in the most digestible format. This week, surprising news of a lawsuit filed by Oher against the Tuohys spurred many to reconsider the movie, searching for answers to questions raised by the legal claim and obscured by the film’s comfortable, tidy narrative.Oher is suing the couple for a full accounting of their relationship. He claims that when he thought he was being adopted at 18, the Tuohys urged him to sign a conservatorship that gave them control to enter into contracts on his behalf. He says that the familial bond, warmly portrayed in the movie, was a lie and that the Tuohys enriched themselves at his expense.The Tuohys have defended their actions, arguing in a statement that the conservatorship was a legal necessity so Oher could play football at the University of Mississippi without jeopardizing his eligibility.In a story with at least four versions — those of Lewis, the movie studio, Oher and the Tuohys — it’s almost impossible to discern who is telling the truth.When Michael Oher was selected in the first round of the 2009 N.F.L. draft, the Tuohy family was by his side.Jeff Zelevansky/Getty ImagesUntil this week, I must admit, I had never seen “The Blind Side.” I’d purposefully avoided it. I’m leery of movies that lean on simple racial clichés — a fatigue that began as a child, when so many of my Black heroes died at the end of films so white heroes could live.News of Oher’s lawsuit convinced me that it was time to plop down on the couch and take in the film, with the benefit of 14 years of hindsight — 14 years in which race and sports have re-emerged as essential platforms for the examination of America’s troubles.My assumptions were proved correct early in the film, while Oher’s character was taking shape. As the story unfolds, he is shown as a lost cause before meeting the Tuohys and attending a well-to-do Christian school in Memphis. The film portrays him in easy terms: as a body, first and foremost — a gargantuan Black teen whose I.Q., we are told, is low, and who has no idea whatsoever about how life operates in worlds that are not swamped in poverty and despair.Sandra Bullock won an Oscar in 2010 for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy.Warner Brothers Pictures/AlamyThe Oher of the film, particularly early on, has little agency and no real dreams of his own. When I saw that, it felt like a gut punch. “What?” I muttered. “There’s no way this characterization is true.”The Baltimore Ravens selected Oher in the first round of the 2009 N.F.L. draft. No one makes it that far in sports without a foundation of years of motivation and training, which gives credence to Oher’s long-held criticism of his portrayal in the film. He is an intelligent person, Oher has said, again and again, and he was a skilled football player well before meeting the Tuohys.Not someone who needed the Tuohys’ young, pint-size son, Sean Jr., to teach him the game in the easiest of terms — by using bottles of condiments to show formations and plays. We watch Sean Jr. at a park, delighting in putting a clueless Oher through workouts.The movie also shows the Tuohys using sports as a vehicle for Oher to develop confidence, enter a world of prestige and riches — and eventually to attend Ole Miss, the couple’s alma mater, where Sean Tuohy once starred in basketball.Oher protects Leigh Anne Tuohy when they dare to go to the neighborhoods where he’d grown up — “That horrible part of town,” she says. He saves Sean Jr.’s life when the two are in a car crash by using his massive arm to shield the young boy from the force of an airbag. When Oher struggles on the practice field as he learns the game, Leigh Anne Tuohy bounds from the sidelines and drills him with firm instruction: He must shield the quarterback the same way he guarded her and her son.“Protect the family,” she insists.A lesson delivered to Oher by a feisty white woman as if he were a first-grader (or a servant) is a turning point. Oher begins transforming from a football neophyte raised on the streets into an offensive lineman with the strength of Zeus, the nimbleness of Mikhail Baryshnikov and the size of an upright piano.Soon, we watch him play in a game, enduring aggressive and racist taunting from an opponent who initially has his way with an inexperienced rival.Suddenly, Oher snaps. He does not just block the opposing player: Enraged, Oher lifts him and drives him across the field and over a fence.“Where were you taking him, Mike?” his coach asks as Oher stands on the sidelines.“To the bus,” Oher deadpans, his tone innocent and childlike. “It was time for him to go home.”By the film’s end, the transformation is complete. We learn that under the watch of a wealthy white family, Oher’s I.Q. has improved to an average level! We see him become a high school champion! We watch a parade of coaches — real coaches, playing themselves in the film — fawn over Oher as they try to persuade him to suit up for their school.It is hard to figure out, by the movie’s telling, Oher’s motivation, or his savvy, because he continues to be portrayed as a prop — quiet, docile, a young man who, for the most part, does as his newfound family says. This, by the way, makes it hard to even figure out, all these years later, the truth of his lawsuit.Oher has disputed his portrayal in the film, telling his version of events in two memoirs.Scott Cunningham/Getty ImagesWhat we do see in the movie is that he shines in college and the pros. There he is in the N.F.L., in his Baltimore Ravens gear. He had made it to the sports Promised Land and through it all, the Tuohy family was at his side.This film had everything.The dumbed-down trope about race and class in America that Hollywood has always peddled.The simplified narrative that uncritically hails sport and its purity, the way it can change lives, always for the better, by shaping diamonds in the rough into jewels. The shadowy side of sports — the cheating, the lies, the broken promises, which, in this legal tussle, could be coming from either side — never encroach on the fairy tale. More

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      in Movies

      Michael Oher, Depicted in ‘The Blind Side,’ Says He Was Conned With Adoption Promise

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      Michael Oher, whose life was depicted in the 2009 film, says in a lawsuit that he was never fully adopted by the family that took him in and was swindled into signing away his decision-making powers at 18.The former N.F.L. player Michael Oher, whose journey out of poverty and into football stardom was dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” asked a Tennessee court on Monday to formally end his legal relationship with the family who took him in, claiming that he had never actually been adopted and had been tricked into signing away his decision-making powers so the family could make millions of dollars off his life story.Oher, 37, is seeking a termination of the conservatorship that began when he was 18, plus money that he says he should have earned from the movie, as well as an injunction preventing Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy from using his name and likeness.The petition, filed in Shelby County in Tennessee, claims that when he thought he was being adopted, the Tuohys urged him to sign a conservatorship in which he relinquished his ability to enter into contracts. The lawsuit also claims that Oher, who started living with the Tuohys at age 16, unknowingly signed away the rights to his life story to 20th Century Fox in 2007.Oher’s lawyer, J. Gerard Stranch IV, declined to comment beyond what was stated in the lawsuit.For “The Blind Side,” the hit film that starred Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy and Quinton Aaron as Oher, the Tuohys negotiated a contract of $225,000 plus 2.5 percent of future “defined net proceeds” for themselves and their biological children, the lawsuit said.Oher says in the lawsuit that he received nothing while the movie generated more than $300 million in revenue worldwide.The Tuohy family did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The New York Times. In an interview with The Daily Memphian on Monday, Sean Tuohy said that he had been “devastated” to hear about the lawsuit and that it was “upsetting to think we would make money off any of our children.” Tuohy said that he would be willing to end the conservatorship and that everybody in his family, including Oher, got an equal share from the movie, around $14,000.Sean Tuohy went on to say the conservatorship had been intended to allow Oher to play at the University of Mississippi, which he and his wife attended.Sean Tuohy Jr., the son of Leigh Anne and Sean, said in an interview with Barstool Sports on Monday that he made “60, 70 grand over the course of the last four, five years” from the movie.In Tennessee, a conservatorship is defined as an arrangement in which a court removes at least some “decision-making powers and duties” from “a person with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas” and grants those duties to a conservator or co-conservators. The 2004 order that granted Oher’s conservatorship to the Tuohys states that Oher appeared to have “no known physical or psychological disabilities.”According to the petition, Oher only recently found out — in February this year — that he had not been legally adopted. Oher agreed to enter into the conservatorship thinking that it was a required part of the adoption process, the lawsuit says.Oher, who retired from football in 2017, was selected with the No. 23 overall pick in the 2009 N.F.L. draft by the Baltimore Ravens and played eight N.F.L. seasons as an offensive tackle for the Ravens, the Tennessee Titans and the Carolina Panthers. He won the Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2013.He played college football from 2005 to 2009 at Mississippi, where he earned two first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors, in 2007 and 2008, and was named a consensus first-team all-American in 2008.“The Blind Side,” which was released in 2009 and was adapted from a 2006 book by Michael Lewis, depicts Oher as a poor teenager growing up in Memphis and looking after his mother, who was addicted to cocaine. The movie portrays Oher as a naturally talented athlete, at both basketball and football, who is spotted by a coach at a local private school, which later admits him. Oher comes to know Sean Tuohy Jr. before moving in with the family and earning a scholarship to Mississippi.But Oher seemed uncomfortable with the movie’s depiction of him, and what it meant for his career. In a 2015 interview, when he was playing for the Panthers, Oher said that the movie had portrayed him as less intelligent than he was and had influenced how people saw him within the sport.“People look at me and they take things away from me because of a movie,” Oher said. “They don’t really see the skills and the kind of player I am. That’s why I get downgraded so much, because of something off the field.” More