For sports fans, there are no two words more exciting than “game seven.” Just ask Danny DeVito.
DeVito, 79, serves as the executive producer on Prime Video’s upcoming docuseries Game 7 — a bit of a departure from the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star’s usual body of work.
But for DeVito, Game 7 — the series and the concept — is about more than just a game. “I’m a sports enthusiast in kind of a weird way,” the actor tells PEOPLE. “Most of my friends just watch it all the time and go to games,” he says of pals like Penny Marshall, a Yankees loyalist; Jack Nicholson, a diehard Lakers fan and Spike Lee, a regular at Madison Square Garden during the Knicks’ season.
“Nicholson will watch basketball morning, noon and night,” says DeVito, “But I only do it when it’s the playoffs, I need the rush.”
The Taxi star grew up in New Jersey’s Asbury Park with a father who would take him to Ebbetts Field (where the Brooklyn Dodgers played until 1958) “anytime he could” and a mother who “for some reason, became a crazy Yankees fan,” says DeVito.
US actor Danny DeVito arrives for Disney’s 2024 Upfront presentation at North Javits Center on May 14, 2024 in New York.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty
“The most exciting thing in my household was when we’d move the television to the porch, and if there was a Yankee-Dodger game, forget about it,” he says, fittingly playing up the Italian inflection.
“My mother and father were beer drinkers and they smoked like chimneys, and we had no air conditioning so we’d open the two windows in the front and we’d have aunts and uncles and cousins, it was the loudest house on the block,” DeVito recalls fondly. “It was a lot of fun,”
The actor recalled those exciting family gatherings to watch baseball when he was approached by former hockey star Mark Messier to participate in a series about the magic of the “Game 7” concept.
“LeBron [James] said it — the two most important words in sports are game seven,” DeVito says, “and we saw how there are so many wonderful moments that put you on the edge of your seat.”
“There’s nothing like a game seven,” the father of three, whose son Jake and daughter Lucy also serve as producers on the series, adds.
The thrill of a “game seven” isn’t reserved for athletes, though, if you ask DeVito. “We all go through these game sevens in our lifetimes.”
One of DeVito’s personal “game seven” moments was the night before he filmed his first episode of Taxi in 1978. “There was a plant in my dressing room and a note from Jim Brooks that said, ‘Dear Danny, as Louie De Palma would say, if you don’t do good tonight, you’ll be eating s— tomorrow.'”
“Maybe you’re out there on the wing or you’re about to ask for your girlfriend’s hand in marriage and you’ve got to walk through that door and talk to her father — that’s a game seven,” says DeVito.
The five-part docuseries premieres on Prime Video on Oct. 22. Each episode covers a different historic Game 7 from the perspectives of both the winning and losing athletes and their fans.
In order of episode release, the games featured in the series include the 2003 ALCS game between the Yankees and Red Sox, the Edmonton Oilers vs. Philadelphia Flyers 1987 Stanley Cup Finals, the 2006 NBA Western Conference semifinals between the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs, the Chicago Cubs vs. the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 MLB World Series and the New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks in the 1994 championship game.
