‘I Play Rocky’ Star Anthony Ippolito on Becoming Sylvester Stallone and Acting With a Dog: ‘He Wasn’t a Huge Fan of Me’

Anthony Ippolito had to do more than nail Sylvester Stallone’s signature voice to play him in “I Play Rocky.”

He also had to transform his skinny physique to one with bulging muscles.

“It had its moments for sure. I was being tested,” Ippolito told me Saturday at the AFI Fest “I Play Rocky” screening in Los Angeles. “It’s like a consistency thing, though. I had a great deal of time, so just an entire lifestyle shift and it was just one of the priorities of every day for a pretty long period.”

As Ippolito previously told Variety’s Clayton Davis, he spent nearly two years bulking up from about 150 pounds to roughly 180 while training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn.

What did family and friends think?

“It happened over time, but a couple of people were like, ‘What’s going on?’” Ippolito recalled. “They didn’t necessarily know I was doing the prep, and they were like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I was like, ‘I’ve been going to the gym, been eating.’”

“I Play Rocky,” directed by Peter Farrelly, follows Stallone’s journey to get “Rocky” made in 1976. Now considered one of the greatest films ever made, the odds were way more against Stallone than with him when he first pitched the movie in Hollywood.

AnnaSophia Robb plays Stallone’s first wife, Sasha, in “I Play Rocky.” Stephan James portrays Carl Weathers. Rounding out the cast are Kiki Seto, P.J. Byrne, Matt Dillon, Tracy Letts and Jay Duplass.

If jitters on the first day of filming weren’t already enough to contend with, Ippolito’s first scenes were with a dog playing Stallone’s pooch Butkus. Stallone famously sold Butkus for $40 when before he found fame because he couldn’t afford to feed him. After selling the “Rocky” script, he bought him back for $15,000.

Anthony Ippolito describes his first day filming "I Play Rocky":

"Irwin Winkler was actually on set day one. We did a lot of stuff with Butkus that day, and I hadn't met that specific dog until the day prior to shooting, and he didn't happen to take a liking to me until a… pic.twitter.com/7tPKpNnp4M

— Variety (@Variety) October 24, 2026

“I hadn’t met that specific dog until like the day prior to shooting,” Ippolito said. “He didn’t happen to take a liking to me until a couple of days in. When you give him enough treats, then he started to warm up. But at that point he was, you know, a 140-, 160-pound dog [and] wasn’t a huge fan of me, so it kind of just added to it. He just did whatever he wanted to do, and that was usually not what we were looking for him to do … In some ways they, they give you the most beautiful stuff. It’s just you gotta be patient.”

“I Play Rocky” is in limited release on Nov. 6, followed by going wide on Nov. 20.

See more photos from the “I Play Rocky” screening at AFI Fest below.