How Michael Strahan’s Failed Sitcom With Carl Weathers & Snoop Dogg Helped Shape His Career

Michael Strahan is a man of many accomplishments. A former NFL defensive end, he spent his entire 15-year career with the New York Giants, becoming a Super Bowl champion, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, and one of the most dominant defensive players of his era. These days, he is a coanchor on ABC’s Good Morning America and serves as an analyst on Fox NFL Sunday.

But did you know Strahan was also a sitcom star, albeit briefly?

In 2009, he starred in the short-lived Fox comedy Brothers, playing Mike Trainor, a retired NFL player who returns to his hometown to reconnect with his family and help his disabled brother run a restaurant.

In the show, Daryl Mitchell starred as Chill, Mike’s brother and struggling restaurant owner, while CCH Pounder played Adele, their mother, and Carl Weathers starred as Coach Trainor, their father. Occasionally, Snoop Dogg would stop by while comedian Arsenio Hall and professional wrestler Kevin Nash would make cameos.

Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection

The show originally aired on Fridays before being moved twice in the schedule and ultimately canceled after just a few episodes. And though mostly forgotten, the series gave Strahan some of his most important life lessons.

Strahan spoke warmly of the sitcom while chatting on Rhyon Brown’s The Open Door Podcast, stating that it was a great experience with a wonderful cast, though he was a bit too inexperienced at the time. “I did a show, Brothers, on Fox for a year, and it was great. I mean, incredible cast. But I was so green and knew nothing about acting. I’m in that world, and I’m kind of looking around, ‘OK, I gotta figure this out!’ But I enjoyed it,” said Strahan. “But I realized that there were probably guys out there who had more commitment to acting than I did at that time in my life, that I was taking this opportunity from them.”

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Strahan then explained why he wasn’t upset when the sitcom came to an end: “Why am I just sitting here doing something I’m half-a**ed passionate about instead of trying to keep on figuring out what I really am passionate about and what I really feel comfortable doing? And so when that passed, I wasn’t upset about it. I was like, ‘OK, but that was a cool experience.'”

“I’ve been able to take that, and when I did live and when I’ve done commercials or I’ve done anything, I’m able to tap into what I learned and put myself into another place of whatever character I got to play. We were doing skits for Thanksgiving or Halloween, or different things like that. I can play that character and not feel goofy about it because I’ve done a show,” he explained.

“Everything that may not have worked in that moment, but it has taught me something that I’ve carried that has helped me in the future down the road,” said Strahan. “That’s what I learned. Life is about learning, evolving, figuring things out. Something fails. It’s a failure, but it’s not because I learned what to do and what not to do on the next thing, and there’s always some joy, no matter what the experience is. There’s some joy line you can find in there that’s only going to help you down the road.”