Lauren Graham & Josh Duhamel Share Hopes for This ‘Mighty Ducks’ Cameo on ‘Game Changers’
Q&A
The Mighty Ducks are underdogs once again in The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Season 2. After winning their team name back at the end of Season 1, the team gets invited to an exclusive hockey training summer camp. But what coach Alex Morrow (Lauren Graham) and the kids don’t realize is the camp is far from campfires and s’mores. It’s an elite training camp run by former NHL player Colin Cole, played by Josh Duhamel, who steps in in Emilio Estevez‘s absence.
The Ducks have to prove themselves once more among these NHL hopefuls at EPIC (Elite Performance Ice Center), but there’s much the former and future pros can learn from this scrappy group of players and their fun-loving coach.
Fans get Mighty Ducks original cast cameos right off the bat in the Season 2 premiere. But Graham and Duhamel tell TV Insider there’s one cast member they’re still hoping will make an appearance. Here, the actors break down what to expect in The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Season 2, premiering September 28 on Disney+.
We get a couple of cameos from the original cast in the premiere. What other cameos are you hoping for in the future?
Lauren Graham: The popular vote seems to be people would enjoy seeing Joshua Jackson.
Josh Duhamel: I would love to. I’ve never worked with Josh Jackson. That’d be fun. Do you think he would do it?
Graham: I don’t know! Let’s ask him. [Laughs]
Lauren, the Mighty Ducks are underdogs again in Season 2. How is this new underdog challenge different from Season 1?
Graham: Because we didn’t expect to find ourselves in that boat. We thought we’d really advanced, which we did. I was planning for the kids to have this amazing summer with a little bit of hockey mixed in, and we get to the world’s most stressful sports camp, so we’re the underdogs because the stakes have been raised.
The kids are also a little bit older now. Their concerns and interests are changing, as adolescents do. So internally, just in terms of the people and the characters they’re playing, they’re still struggling with what’s important: sports or a new love interest or having fun or summertime. There’s a lot of new to explore.
Josh, did you play hockey before? How much did you need to learn about it before this season, since Colin’s a pro?
Duhamel: I did play a lot of hockey as a kid. I played up until seventh grade, and then I got really tall and really skinny, and I felt like I was more suited for basketball, so I went that route. I hung up the skates for 30-some years and picked them back up for Mighty Duck‘s Season 2. It wasn’t pretty. It really wasn’t.
Graham: That’s not true. He looked like a pro from the first day. I remember you saying “I’m so nervous,” then you got out there and were like [swishing noises].
Duhamel: After a little bit of practice, I got it back a little bit, but I never quite got what I wanted to, but I do appreciate that, Lauren. One of the most pleasant surprises of the whole experience was falling back in love with hockey again and getting to get out there and put the pads and the skates on again.
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Lauren, the team gets some shocking news when they arrive to camp. What’s going through Alex’s mind when the kids decide they want to stay?
Graham: I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I think like, “Oh, no, this is exactly what I’m trying to lead us away from.” It’s this world where it’s just so much pressure and no balance. I think I’m bringing them to some fun experience, but I do think that I can still, within as much as I understand what the camp is, feel hopeful that we’re gonna have a fun summer with campfire songs and s’mores.
Alex and Colin completely disagree about how these kids should spend their summers. What will Alex and Colin learn from each other this season?
Graham: It’s always fun as actors when you have two people with really opposing views. In the beginning, we both start out very rigidly sure that we are correct in our viewpoints, and then, we learn from each other. I really learn a lot about sportsmanship, about giving a kid a challenge and letting them face it on their own, and about taking the risk it sometimes takes to do something you’re really passionate about. I’m just more about fun.
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Duhamel: This is a guy who has been focused on hockey and excelling at hockey his entire life. And even after he finished his career, he continues that with this institute and tries to push that onto his own kid. As a result, he is losing his son, they’re drifting apart. His son doesn’t want to play hockey; he has lost his love for the game. It isn’t until he meets Alex that she sort of shakes him out of that and makes him realize that hockey isn’t everything. It’s not the be all, end all of life. You’ve got to stop and smell the roses from time to time, and these kids deserve to have a summer. They deserve to have some fun. It’s not just about hockey.
I think that’s really where a lot of the fun is had in this series and a lot of the conflict and a lot of the comedy. But also in my journey throughout the season, he becomes a little bit less intense and a little bit more present, I would say.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Season 2 Premiere, Wednesday, September 28, Disney+
