“Blowing stuff up is fun, but this is really fun,” said MythBuster Tory Belleci, laughing as he volleyed a tennis ball with Cal men’s tennis coach Peter Wright.
The MythBusters’ Build Team was on campus Tuesday to film for a part of an episode involving a tennis myth. The crew — which also includes Grant Imahara and Kari Byron — worked closely with coach Wright as cameras rolled, filming their volleys.
Although the exact nature of the myth that the team is trying to bust cannot be publicly revealed, the crew needed to brush up on their tennis skills to prepare for a later part of the episode.
Director Lauren Williams, who had known Wright growing up in the city of Berkeley, easily reached out to the Cal men’s tennis head coach to secure the location on the Berkeley campus. She found it to be an excellent place to film the episode, because of both Wright’s expertise and the natural beauty of the campus.
“Cal is incredibly telegenic. If you go into a track, it’s this Greek inspired track. If you go onto a court, it’s surrounded by beautiful trees,” Williams said. “It’s a campus that’s not only a symbol of higher learning and achievement but it’s also very visually exciting.”
The MythBusters — which are based out of San Francisco — found that not only was the Hellman Tennis Complex at Cal the perfect place to film, but that also coach Wright was the perfect person to teach them some tennis basics.
“[Coach Wright] was awesome,” said Tory after filming had finished. “Back in the shop we were fumbling with the tennis balls, trying to get the rackets to work and couldn’t do it. We come out here and in five minutes we were looking like pros.”
Tory had the benefit of playing tennis in high school, but Kari and Grant were not so lucky.
“This was my first time on a tennis court ever,” said Kari.
But through working with coach Wright and associate coach Tyler Browne, the team was soon hitting well enough for the purposes of their myth.
“I have a grand total of seven hours of instruction in tennis in my life,” said Grant. “And with [coach Wright’s] help I look like I’m good at tennis!”
In addition to the great instruction they received, the MythBusters were also excited to work with a local university.
“We always want to foster relations with higher education in the area,” said Kari.
But after almost five hours of filming, the MythBusters hosts hit enough television-worthy volleys to call it a day. Although the later parts of the show could not be revealed to the public, the crew is anticipating performing an experiment comparable to if not more exciting than several of the other myths they have busted.
“We’re going to ramp up to something that I don’t even think has been done in real life. And it’s gonna be crazy,” Grant said.
The episode is still far way from airing, and could be up to six months or even a year away.
Contact Janice Chua at jchua@dailycal.org. Contact Riley McAtee at rmcatee@dailycal.org
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