‘The Senior’: Michael Chiklis Comes Back In Life & Football

Premiering Friday, Sept. 19, the fact-inspired drama The Senior stars Michael Chiklis as Mike Flynt, a 59-year-old who wants a second chance to live out his missed senior year on his college football team.

Playing the Long Game With Michael Chiklis

I’ve known Chiklis since his hit series The Shield premiered back in 2002.

My first set visit after moving to L.A. that year was to a location shoot for the FX police drama, in the L.A. neighborhood of Silver Lake. We were underneath a freeway overpass, as a door was pulled off a house (the show went there more than once, as you can see in this 2005 story,which includes guest star Glenn Close).

So, when Chiklis said this to me earlier this week in a video interview about The Senior (full video embedded below), he’s telling the truth:

You’ve seen me through a lot of the ups and downs in my career and some of them have been really, really high highs, and I’ve gone through some low lows, and everything in between — and this is a good one.

What Is The Senior About?

Here’s what distributor Angel Studios had to say:

At 59, Mike Flynt might be too old to play college football—but not too old to settle unfinished business. Nearly forty years after leaving his team, he returns to his alma mater to face the moment that changed everything. Bruised, doubted, and nearly broken, he fights for one last game—not for glory, but for the teammates he lost, the family he fractured, and the ending he still believes is possible.

Chiklis, the Team Captain

Chiklis also gets to relive a bit of his own schoolboy-athlete story in The Senior:

I’m a team player. I believe I’ve always been that I was the captain of my football team when I was in high school.

There’s something about the comraderie of being on a team and working towards a common goal with a group of people. And that carries over into everything I do. My film and television career, theater — it’s a team sport.

So true. Back at The Shield, Chiklis used to buy pizza for cast and crew each week and invite them all to lunch to watch a cut of the next episode. As number-one on the call sheet for the show, he always emphasized the importance of leadership.

Mike Flynt, the Guy Who Came Back

The same idea of leadership is important for the real-life Mike Flynt, who joined Chiklis for the interview. After his playing days, he transitioned to coaching (the story in the film is somewhat simplified from Flynt’s real story).

I didn’t make that mistake that so many people make that quit training, quit doing anything really demanding physically. But I continue to put adversity into my life from a physical standpoint.

I had been in the fitness business, I was a strength and conditioning coach at three major universities. And my philosophy and my coaching was, I’d never asked one of my athletes to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.

And so, after I got out of coaching, I continued that.