Carl Weathers Destroyed His Iconic Rocky Hat With Some Misguided Gardening
Actor and athlete Carl Weathers passed away yesterday at the age of 76, his family has announced. Weathers will be missed not just for the performances he gave but for the way his sense of humor made everything he was a part of better. Whether the actor was teasing Grogu for getting into trouble, appearing as a cheapskate version of himself on "Arrested Development," or voicing Combat Carl in "Toy Story 4," Weathers brought a sense of joy to each project he participated in.
In the case of the "Rocky" franchise, it felt as if the actor never really got the chance to stop playing Apollo Creed despite the character's death in "Rocky IV." His turn as the flamboyant fighter ended in 1985, but Weathers was still (understandably) asked about his part in the action series throughout the decades that followed. The actor fielded these questions gamely and sometimes with a sense of mischief, as in a 2017 interview for The Rich Eisen Show when Weathers was asked if he kept any of the props from the "Rocky" franchise.
The stars and stripes got a little soggy
"What do you have from 'Rocky'?" the host asked after Weathers admitted he didn't get to keep his character's wooden hand after filming the Adam Sandler comedy "Happy Gilmore." Weathers confirmed that he was able to keep some key costume pieces from the first "Rocky" film, including Creed's iconic American flag-striped boxing shorts. "I mean, how about the original shorts?" he told hosts, adding that he still has the entire original wardrobe aside from Creed's extra-tall Uncle Sam-style hat.
"The only thing I don't have is the hat," Weathers said, before confessing that he'd lost it in a houseplant-related incident. "I loved the hat. At the time, I still lived in Oakland and had this great house in Oakland, and I put the hat upside down on a side table in sort of this TV room." Weathers had the clever idea to use the hat as a sort of decoration, putting a "big fern" inside that was "sticking out of the top." Like any good gardener, he put a dish under the fern to catch any water that might soak through, but it sounds like it may have been the type of terracotta clay that's deceptively porous.
Weathers looked back fondly on Rocky
"The fern's sticking out of the top. The one thing I didn't figure on is you put a dish under the plant, but it's clay, and the damn things leached through and the hat was ruined," Weathers explained. Without going into detail about what befell the hat (I'm picturing mold and dirt marks), Weathers conceded that he "lost the hat." But the actor still enthused about the "Rocky" props he did keep: "I have the shorts, I have the shoes, I have the socks, I have the tassels, I have all that." Hilariously, when interviewers asked Weathers when he last tried on the shorts, he joked that they were hoping for a fashion show. "You're looking at me very salacious there, you want me to put those shorts on, don't ya?" the actor riffed, before admitting he hadn't worn them in a long time.
Weathers occasionally got serious about "Rocky" too, as in a 2015 retrospective for The Hollywood Reporter. "With ['Rocky'], it was breaking new ground and we delivered something that was so magical in so many ways," the actor told the outlet, noting that he was a fan of the franchise as well as a part of it. "Those movies, for me, were not only interesting but always worth making, worth being a part of, and worth seeing." Weathers will be missed.