A two-time state champion at North Oldham High School, Lauren Kline figured her days of significant tennis matches ended in 2013 after a successful four-year career at Furman University.
That’s until she found herself on the court with renowned actor and comedian Steve Carell.
Kline’s days of competitive tennis may be finished, but she recently got to relive her glory days a bit while playing two roles – including the body double for the actress playing Margaret Court – in the upcoming “Battle of the Sexes” movie co-starring Carell and Emma Stone.
“It was a great experience, and I made a ton of friends out of the process,” the 25-year-old Kline said. “It was great meeting all of the actors and the actresses. You have a preconceived notion of how a Steve Carell or an Emma Stone or those type of people would be. They’re the nicest people in the world. They were so welcoming to us and so appreciative of us helping out with their film.”
Set for release in January of 2017, “Battle of the Sexes” tells the story of the 1973 exhibition tennis match in which Billie Jean King (played by Stone) defeated former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs (played by Carell).
So how did a woman from Kentucky with no prior acting experience end up in the film? It involves a pizza company and a former work acquaintance of Kline’s father.
Lauren Kline won state singles titles as a junior (2008) and senior (2009) at North Oldham and had a solid career at Furman, where she earned a No. 68 national ranking and first-team All-Southern Conference honors as a senior.
But after graduation in 2013, Kline said she was ready to take a break from tennis and put her degree in business administration to work. She entered a leadership-development program with Domino’s Pizza a month after graduation.
“I enjoy the business world, and I’m big into finance,” Kline said. “When I found out about this position, there was nothing that could have made me say no.”
Lauren Kline was a state champion player during her time at North Oldham High School. (Photo contributed by Kline)
The training program took Kline to Michigan and Arizona before she landed a job in January as a franchise consultant in San Diego. Two months later she played tennis with Ed Charles, who had once worked with Kline’s father, Larry, at the Louisville Tennis Club.
Charles introduced Lauren to Lornie Kuhle, who was the promoter for the 1973 King-Riggs exhibition and who opened the Bobby Riggs Tennis Club and Museum in Encinitas, Calif., in 1995.
“He was like, ‘Hey, do you want to be in a movie with Steve Carell?’” Kline said. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah. I don’t really know what that means, but, sure?’”
With her new job at Domino’s, Kline was reluctant to commit to what she said ended up as “working two full-time jobs for a month and a half.”
“But it’s kind of hard to say no to an experience like that,” she said.
Kline said she spent 15-20 days over a six-week period shooting scenes for the film. She plays the body double for actress Jessica McNamee, who plays the role of Court. Kline also plays the role of Nancy Richey, who was one of the “Original Nine” who started the Virginia Slims Tour in 1970.
“We don’t have speaking lines that were written in a script,” Kline said. “But we had to naturally speak and interact when we were watching matches or if we were at the airport on in other areas. It was a lot of natural acting, I guess they would call it.”
Kline said she originally was in line to play the body double for Stone but ended up looking more like McNamee.
“They wanted to make the tennis look really legit in the movie,” Kline said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen ‘Wimbledon’ or some other tennis movies, but the tennis aspects haven’t always been that fantastic. So we didn’t want that to happen.”
Along those lines, Kline had to become familiar with wooden rackets and the old-school continental forehand grip. She said she and Vince Spadea, the former tennis pro who played Carell’s body double, spent hours becoming comfortable with the unfamiliar techniques.
Kline added that Carell didn’t need much help with the tennis scenes.
“He’s very good,” Kline said. “He still had a body double for some of the more intense points, but he can play. I have some videos where he actually beat me in a few points and I was not letting him win. But he was always making everyone laugh and was such a nice guy the entire time. It was really fun.”
But probably not fun enough for Kline to give up her day job.
“Being an actress is not my goal in life,” Kline said with a laugh. “I don’t really intend to ever do anything like that again.”
Jason Frakes can be reached at (502) 582-4046 and jfrakes@courier-journal.com.