Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with First One In’s Gina O’Brien and Josh Segarra

Director-writer Gina O’Brien and actor Josh Segarra are serving up the laughs in their must-see new comedy, First One In. Thrown off a popular reality show in disgrace, unemployed real estate agent Madi Cooke (Kat Foster), teams up with a group of misfit tennis players in a do-or-die match against Bobbi Mason (Georgia King)—an overachieving, tightly wound, real estate shark—and her tennis-playing minions. Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Gina and Josh about First One In and how everyone involved showed up ready to play ball.

PC: Tell us about First One In and the inspiration behind the film
Gina: Oh my gosh. It’s my life. I mean I haven’t been on an episode of Grit, and I haven’t killed an endangered species. [laughs] But I play a little tennis. That was my inspiration. [laughs]

PC: Josh, you’ve done it all in your career. What was it about this particular project that stood out to you? What should audiences know about Fernando?
Josh: I was laughing my butt off fifteen pages into the script. I felt like I knew these characters. I knew these women. I love getting out there and playing on the court. When you’re out there, competition takes over. What I love about it was the hilarity in all of these characters, whether they wanted to win or whether they wanted to make friendships. I was smiling ear to ear. You’re going to have a good time and you’re going to get to spend time with this funky bunch. That’s what I enjoyed. I knew I couldn’t let it pass me. I wanted to go out there and enjoy myself through hitting some tennis balls.

Gina: We were so lucky to get you! Thank you.

Josh: Thank you, Gina!

Gina: You have such an energy. You really do bounce. You’re energetic and funny as hell. I’m hearing your voice in my head now when I play. It’s ridiculous. Hammer. Hammer. [laughs]

Josh: [laughs]

PC: What is your relationship with the sport? Has it changed since finishing the film?
Gina: The sport unfortunately hasn’t changed. I’m still not a good player. I’m trying to be. It’s rife with comedic moments. I went to adult tennis camp today and yesterday. It’s ridiculous. I know, it’s so funny. I can’t believe I just admitted that, but this is going to be the year that I try to get better.

Josh: I’m so jealous you went to adult tennis camp. I actually played today. I told Gina this. I grew up messing around in the summers. We had courts in my neighborhood. I’d always play with my buddies. Then as I got older, I’d mess around maybe once a year, maybe once every two years. I got to do an episode of a show I did a while ago called Sirens where the character was obsessed with tennis. So the last time I played was a few years ago. Then I get this script and I fell in love with it again.

I told Gina last time I saw her when I was doing ADR. I had played right before I saw her. Now I’ve played the last three weeks. It’s the most consistent I’ve played tennis in I can’t tell you since I was a teenager. I might join Gina in that adult tennis camp soon.

In between takes, I would grab Mehdi-Frantz. He was our tennis pro. He was incredible. You had to get in line to grab him in between setups because he’d go out there and hit balls with us. He made us work on our serves. Finally, I think maybe in our seventh or eighth day, we were all at dinner and I can’t remember who asked him, but somebody was like, “Mehdi, hit some serves. Show us what’s really in the cannon.” He went out there and ripped them. We were like, that’s our guy! [laughs]

Gina: He has a tennis documentary out there.

Josh: It’s a great doc. It’s about the cats that are trying to go pro. He taught me all about it. The different levels in the tennis world. We really only hear about the Top 200.

PC: Gina, this is your directorial debut. Did anything surprise you about the experience? What was the biggest takeaway for you?
Gina: That I absolutely loved it. We set out to make this comedy and it’s what we got. It was an incredibly fun time. I think that in the future, having had this experience will make me a better screenwriter. Now I understand things that I didn’t know before.

PC: In your director notes, you also stated that it was really important for you to create this space for improvisation. Do the two of you have a favorite scene that was improvised?
Josh: It always starts with the captain of the ship. She created a space where we felt safe to do that. It felt like a safe, fun space to get to work and to see her command it when she needed to. Your job as a director is to let the energy flow, and she would always let that energy flow. She was always laughing behind the monitor and told us to keep going. With a guy like Fernando, she would come up and be like, “Go ahead. Try it! Let’s do this one. Let’s do it. Let’s see what happens.”

I’d be like, “Okay.” She’d be like, “What would that sound like in Spanish?” My favorite directors to work with are those that feel like partners and help guide me when I’m lost and bring me back to center when I’m lost. She was always the one that never made me feel lost—just supported—and I definitely felt that with the cast. We enjoyed ourselves from the vans to set and our way back. We reminisced about how fun that day was. We got to play tennis. We were out in the sun. We were in a cool little bubble that they found us in Long Island. That starts with Gina.

Gina: Thank you, Josh! Going into this, I wanted the actors to come in and have fun with the material. It’s a fun screenplay. We did tap into the Upright Citizens Brigade to find a couple of improv actors. They were Jeff Hiller and Cathryn Mudon. Both helped elevate the material.

I think it worked well. We had Jeff play four roles. It was a good move. But with Fernando, with Josh’s character, he is somebody that every tennis player at my level—whatever that may be—can relate to. Personally, I have a tennis pro who has a tough time speaking English, but he can always get his point across. It just takes a little while. It makes us laugh when we’re with him. Josh, you completely got that. You really did. There’s that one scene that cracks me up where you ask, “Do you think Roger Federer talks about coconuts?” The way you said it, we laughed every time. Chuck Divak, our editor, and I, we’ve seen this film a thousand times and we still laugh at that.

PC: A lot of the cast has a theater background where anything can happen on any given day, given performance. How beneficial was that in creating this space for improvisation? Josh, how does your background help you prepare for this role?
Josh: In truth, one of the best feelings is when you get to a set and you know that everybody cares, is prepared, and is ready to have fun. Everybody was there to play ball, literally and figuratively.

One of the hardest things to do in any situation where you’re playing sports on screen or on stage is to do the sport well. That’s what separates the pros from us, right? When the lights turn on, they’re still able to perform to the best of their abilities. All of a sudden, we got actors out here on a tennis court with, like, twenty-five extras all watching. We need to be precise. We need to get the ball in a certain area of the court so that the camera can capture that moment.

Everybody was having fun in the midst of freaking out that we weren’t hitting the ball correctly. We went out there and had fun. Eventually, the ball landed where it needed to. Every single time. It landed right where we needed it to.

I think that comes with the theater background that so many of the cast had. It’s the free-fall effect where you’re able to go out on stage and you have to leave it all on the stage. That, in essence, is what a sports movie is too. You got to go out there and you got to leave it on the court. You have to leave it on the ice. You have to leave it in the pool. Everybody was willing to mess up when they needed to and tighten up when we needed to.

Gina: Such is a movie about people who can’t play. [laughs] It worked. We had some really great actors from Broadway like you mentioned. We had Betsy Wolfe, Julia Murney, and Amanda Cooper. These are women who had big roles in different musicals and Broadway theater. It was pretty amazing.

Watch First One In today. Keep up with Josh, by follow him on Instagram.