With three seasons of Ballers in the books, Rob Corddry is basically a fixture of NFL culture now. But he had to pay his dues, suffering through some bad Patriots teams in his youth and tussling in fantasy football with fellow celebrities along the way. It was all worth it for the bromance with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Corddry spoke to ThePostGame on the set of a recent Pepsi commercial he was shooting with Dak Prescott. Corddry also shot "The Fun Doesn't End Zone" ads with Antonio Brown and Joe Staley.
ThePostGame: I think you just met Dak Prescott, so what are your early impressions of him?
ROB CORDDRY: I didn't meet him yet, but I think we're going to be best friends.
TPG: Why do you think that?
CORDDRY: As you know, I've got tons of charisma. I'm just bubbling over with it. I've got charisma to spare and I like his smile, so I have a feeling you're going to be seeing us all over town together at some point.
TPG: I know you worked with Antonio Brown on another commercial. What was he like?
CORDDRY: First of all, I was initially mad at him because I was never able to get him on a fantasy team. He spent most of his time throwing balls up in the crowd, so that the people in the crowd could catch a ball from Antonio Brown. Imagine it like it was the greatest thing in the world happening for all of these background actors. It was happening for so long that he might have gotten a ball to everyone in that crowd.
TPG: That's pretty crazy. You mentioned your fantasy team. Are you in a famous-people fantasy league or an everyday person fantasy league?
CORDDRY: I'm in four leagues. One of them has got some famous people in it and we call ourselves, "The Hollywood Phonies."
TPG: Do you have a rival in that league?
CORDDRY: Well, I think everybody in that league would say Rob Riggle is their rival. He's always on 100 percent Riggle mode, and he just beat me this last weekend, so yeah, Rob Riggle is my rival, I just decided.
TPG: Has being on Ballers made you a better fantasy football player?
CORDDRY: No, but I think fantasy football may have gotten me the job on Ballers because I had a meeting with those guys before I was cast, and all we did was just talk about fantasy football for an hour and a half. They factored that into my character. But, Jeff, I was pretty awesome at fantasy football before Ballers is what I'm saying.
TPG: How much different is your character (Joe Krutel) from you in real life?
CORDDRY: It's hard to answer those kind of questions. When I start going through the process of getting to know a character, I think about, "What do I sympathize with and where are the similarities?" I think the most glaring similarity that I can see is that we're both very concerned with other people's happiness, not in a positive way. I get very anxious if everyone in the room is not having the best time, so I turn into a dancing monkey like Joe. But other than that, no, he's very hardcore and I'm terrible at math.
TPG: Related to that, do you take crap from The Rock off the air? Or are you tougher than Joe?
CORDDRY: That's funny. I don't know. I think that's pretty similar, our relationship. It's funny that you see that as Joe taking crap from The Rock." From my perspective, he's the one guy who's not afraid to give it back to him. Dwayne is like that in person. He's just a fun guy. What do you call it? We're always "towel-snapping," me and that guy. I'm going to call it towel-snapping.
TPG: Who's been the coolest guest on Ballers? Who has made you the most excited or even the most nervous to be around?
CORDDRY: That's a good question. One of the nicest guys ever, even outside of Ballers, was Steve Guttenberg. I put people on a Henry Winkler scale of kindness and he was right up there with Henry Winkler. All the football players are great, I don't know if I can pick a favorite. I'm not trying to be diplomatic here.
TPG: You're a Patriots fan.
CORDDRY: Yes, I am, sir.
TPG: Did you get to meet Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola when they were on the show?
CORDDRY: No, it's so funny. They shot after the season ended. I met Gronk on the set, and Gronk didn't even shoot. He was just friends with one of the producers and came on by.
TPG: Did you muster up the courage to say something to him?
CORDDRY: Oh yeah, we were wrestling by the end of the day. I was nervous and just got a picture with him, that type of thing.
TPG: You guys could have been towel-snapping by the end of the day.
CORDDRY: I didn't have enough time to get to the towel-snapping level with him, but we could have gotten there. Gronk's a towel-snapper.
TPG: Curb Your Enthusiasm is back. You once played Rick Leftowitz, a sex offender who came to a Seder on an episode. Are you close with Larry David?
CORDDRY: No, not really, but we saw each other at a party that my agency throws once every year. This one was a couple of years ago. I don't do parties very well. I get very uncomfortable and I stand in the corner. Larry David was there and I hadn't seen him since that shoot, and we kind of made eye contact from across the room and saw a kindred spirit and I hung out in the corner Larry David the entire night, and we just made fun of people. It felt like I was in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, my own private episode.
TPG: Are you sure there wasn't a private camera? The whole thing is improv.
CORDDRY: Yup. It might be. I didn't see the last season.
TPG: My favorite role of yours is your role in Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanomo Bay. At the end of that, did you feel dirty with your character and just how terrible he is?
CORDDRY: Yup. There's some kind of weird pleasure in playing a character that disgusting. Not only because they are that disgusting ... hmmm ... you know, there's never a satisfying answer to this because I play a lot of those characters. I'm just good at being harsh I guess. There were a couple of days were it felt pretty icky, but you kind of giggle at how wrong it is.
TPG: Have you seen Ed Helms since then, because you guys were in the interrogation scene together?
CORDDRY: Ed Helms? Yeah, I see him all the time. It's funny because I can walk to his house from mine.
-- Follow Jeff Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Like Jeff Eisenband on Facebook.
