Man, we believe in you: Donovan Carters rise from UCLA to HBOs Ballers

As a defensive lineman at UCLA, Donovan W. Carter dreamed becoming an NFL player. He just didn’t expect to make it as a fictional one.

After Carter’s career in Westwood wrapped in 2012, he faced a question common for college graduates: What now?

“I was just depressed because I put so much time and effort into football and it didn’t work out,” Carter said. “And it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like I wasn’t good enough. I felt like I didn’t get a fair chance.”

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Carter majored in history at UCLA and realized his football career was over after getting cut at a mini-camp held by the Oakland Raiders. He started working various part-time jobs around Los Angeles.

Then a short, bland email from HBO changed his life.

Months later, Carter was cast as Vernon Littlefield, a defensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys in the HBO show “Ballers,” which starred Dwayne Johnson.

The show finished its five-year run in the fall and ended up giving Carter a career in Hollywood he never dreamt of. Now, as he looks into auditions for his next role, whenever that may come, he has a growing future in an industry he got into by chance.

Carter’s college career at UCLA from 2008-12 was defined by coaching changes. The Bruins recruited him as an outside linebacker under Karl Dorrell, now Colorado’s coach, who was fired in late 2007 shortly after Carter signed. Carter decided to stay on and play for new coach Rick Neuheisel. He was switched to defensive line shortly after getting on campus.

Carter ended up playing every position on the defensive line as the team went from a 4-3 defensive scheme under Neuheisel to a 3-4 under Jim Mora, who replaced Neuheisel ahead of Carter’s senior season in 2012.

Carter’s NFL potential was tough to gauge. At 6-foot-1, he didn’t have the height NFL teams seek, but he had the skill set. While the Raiders brought him in for a mini-camp, the consensus among his former coaches was that he would have had a better shot had he not fallen victim to the rapid staff turnover and schematic changes he dealt with at UCLA.

“Schematically he would have fit better in our system as a 4-3 guy,” said Inoke Breckterfield, Carter’s defensive line coach his junior year who currently holds the same position at Wisconsin. “He had the skill set, no doubt about it, but going from linebacker to D-line to 4-3 to a 3-4 didn’t give him enough room to grow at a position. He definitely had the ability to have a chance.”

(Courtesy UCLA Athletics)

Carter didn’t want to do anything with his history degree after graduation. While looking for full-time employment, he explored going into medical sales after hearing those companies like to hire athletes, but he wasn’t hearing back from any of them.

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During his football career he wasn’t able to have summer internships and realized he wasn’t fully prepared for job interviews when he got them. Carter worked summer camps and tended bar as a way to keep himself afloat financially.

“I didn’t have any connections because I didn’t network, and didn’t know how to sell myself at the time, so I was getting really frustrated,” Carter said. “I’m working these part-time hourly jobs, and I kept asking myself how I’m supposed to survive making $12 an hour?”

As he pondered his next move, Carter paid a visit to the Bruins’ football facilities and visited Angus McClure, who was his position coach his senior year and lead recruiter out of high school. McClure, who now coaches at California, thought Carter was built for the education system because of his personality and intelligence and talked about him going into teaching.

When Carter wasn’t interested in that, McClure implored him to look into coaching because his background as a player would make him an asset on many staffs. While playing for a different position coach and multiple coordinators hurt his development, it did give him a Rolodex of coaches to inquire about possible graduate assistant positions.

While he pondered coaching, he approached McClure with another option: acting.

“Donovan has one of the biggest personalities in my 28 years of coaching,” McClure said. “He’s the guy that imitated Rick Neuheisal before the team meeting. He had that sense of humor where he could get the entire team just laughing. Going into my defensive line meetings I could tell he was imitating me a bit. He has one of those personalities that can adapt to any situation. He’s a chameleon.”

Because of UCLA’s proximity to Hollywood, the football program has cultivated relationships with various production companies, talent agencies and casting directors asking for any football players still in the area who are interested in spots in commercials.

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Will Peddie, the Bruins’ former director of player personnel, offered to connect Carter with some of the opportunities that came through his office. A few weeks later, Carter was appearing in a Bose commercial as a blocker for Russell Wilson and in Fox Sports commercials to preview the college football season.

“I started doing that and getting a little experience on set and I’m thinking, ‘This isn’t bad,’” Carter said. “It’s long hours and things like that, but I’m like, ‘This is cool. I’m getting booked and they’re sending me out to other commercials and saying one or two lines maybe a couple of words.’”

As Carter got more experience, he started auditioning for commercials that required more lines. Although he wasn’t getting the parts, he was getting called back, which gave him confidence that he was getting a second chance at the roles.

In the summer of 2013, Peddie got an email from HBO asking if the Bruins had any former players around town who fit the measurements of a defensive lineman or a wide receiver. Peddie sent HBO Carter’s name, and Carter followed up with the email and got a response, telling him where to show up for the audition.

The email didn’t say it was for a new show starring Johnson, so when Carter showed up, he was confused.

“I’m thinking maybe they’re doing a mini-movie series, something like that,” he said. “So then when I get that I’m like, ‘Damn, this is real acting.’ I thought they sent me the wrong email.”

HBO’s casting crew gave Carter the script for Littlefield, which he eventually landed, and Ricky Jerrett, which would end up going to John David Washington, the son of Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington. Carter looked at both scripts and decided to go for Littlefield after seeing that Jerrett was an offensive player with a different body-type.

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Carter was hesitant to audition for the role and paranoid it was going to be the latest rejection for a full-time job. The night before his first read, he called his father, Donovan Sr., who told him to give it a shot.

“The worst thing they’re going to do is say no,” the elder Carter told his son.

Carter got called back 10 times for the role before eventually finding out he got cast as Littlefield for the series’ pilot in September 2013. When he got the call, he was at UCLA Medical Center caring for his grandmother, Barbara, who had just had a heart attack. Despite the good news, Carter said he never really got to celebrate the stunning achievement because of his family situation.

“At the time I couldn’t think of myself,” he said.

Barbara Carter would recover from her heart attack, and was in the car when Carter got the call that the show had been picked up months later after shooting the pilot. Upon hearing the news, he quit his part-time jobs.

“I went from making $12 an hour to $2,500 in commercials,” he said. “And when I got to ‘Ballers,’ I think I started off making $20,000 in the pilot. Then I learned about taxes.”

When he got cast for the role, Carter called McClure, who told him to reach out to another former Bruin for some advice. Mark Harmon is more known for his role of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on CBS’ “NCIS,” but in the early 1970s he was the Bruins quarterback.

Carter called Harmon, who told him to treat acting the same way he treated football.

“The work ethic that put you through football doesn’t change here,” Harmon told him.

At first Carter was intimated about memorizing lines but had a breakthrough when he thought about it in relation to football.

“I had to memorize a different playbook every year because I had a different defensive coordinator every year,” Carter said. “And I was a history major, so that’s a lot of memorization. I know how to memorize stuff because of sports, I just never memorized lines like that.”

The cast of “Ballers” on the red carpet for the Season 2 premiere in 2016. (Sergi Alexander / Getty Images for HBO)

Carter’s transition into acting was aided by Johnson and Washington, who played college football at Miami and Morehouse, respectively, before going into the profession. Johnson is the role model for former football players turned actors, so Carter stuck to Johnson like flypaper and followed his advice whenever he gave it.

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When the show was filming its first season in Miami, Carter and Johnson were at the Biltmore Hotel shooting a scene in which Johnson’s character pitches Carter to sign as a client. In one of his toughest moments on the show, Carter struggled and couldn’t remember his lines. He asked for a second off set and was surprised to see Johnson follow him.

“Man, we believe in you,” Carter remembers Johnson telling him. “You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think you could do this. If you need help, there’s a script coordinator right there, but you got this.”

Carter said the interaction with Johnson was a boost for his confidence and made him realize it was going to work after he was the last person on the show to believe in himself. After that, he said he had no issues during the show’s five seasons.
As his time on “Ballers” continued, Carter got an acting coach to teach him Meisner technique, which focuses on getting the actor to behave instinctively to their surroundings, to give him some proper education in the craft. Later on, he worked with audition coach Sam Stiglitz.

At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter had been auditioning for future roles before they were postponed.

While he didn’t get the NFL shot he was hoping for, Carter still got the NFL treatment from his former coaches. When out on the road recruiting, McClure and Breckterfield sell prospects on the numerous NFL players they’ve produced over the years.

Lately they’ve started listing Vernon Littlefield as one of their biggest success stories, as an excuse to talk about Carter.

“When he told me about (Ballers) I told him to be himself,” McClure said. “It’s amazing how it took off from him. He’s just a natural.”

(Top photo: Sergi Alexander / Getty Images for HBO)

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