is small but stacked. One who’s having a moment lately? Beastmode himself.
After joining the Golden Bears in 2004, went on to become one of Cal’s all-time rushing leaders. In 2007, he was a first-round draft pick for the Buffalo Bills but spent most of his NFL career with the Seattle Seahawks (apart from the 2017–18 seasons with his hometown team, the not-much-longer-for-this-world Oakland Raiders). Acting was mostly accidental. After appearing as himself in comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, he started a production company, Beastmode Productions, and essentially chitchatted himself into a dramatic role on HBO’s Westworld. Since then, he has played a clueless teacher in the cult comedy Bottoms and recently joined Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose in this year’s Love Hurts. In this stretch of his career, he told the Hollywood Reporter, he’s driven by fun: “If it’s something that it looks like I’ll enjoy doing it, then yeah, I’ll rock like that.”
For , art imitated life, and then vice versa. A freshman walk-on for Cal basketball in 1995, he soon earned a scholarship and was a ten-time starter for the Golden Bears during his sophomore season. After graduating, he played for the American Basketball Association and leagues in France, Argentina, and Mexico. Acting was not on Jones’s radar until his friend, a fellow athlete and commercial actor, encouraged him to get an agent. Soon, he was booking commercials and, in 2008, landed the role he is best known for: basketball star Quentin Fields on the teen drama One Tree Hill. As part of the audition, he recalled in an interview with his acting coach, the showrunners wanted to see him shoot hoops: “I was like… That’s the easy part!” Jones subsequently starred in the Tyler Perry movie Temptation and appeared in shows like 90210, Bosch, and The Fix. In September 2024, life became art for Jones, as he and his former castmates donned their Tree Hill Ravens uniforms and played a reunion game for charity. Jones scored the final, buzzer-beating point.
has had a particularly eventful road from sports to screen. A Cal basketball player from 1998 to 2002, he led the Pac-10 in field-goal percentages in 2001 and was team captain his senior year. After college, Hughes played minor league ball and even briefly wore the Harlem Globetrotters’ red, white, and blue. Eventually, he grew disenchanted and pivoted—to academia. In 2013, Hughes earned a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Georgia; his dissertation examined how heavily recruited student-athletes choose their colleges. Years later, after working and lecturing at Stanford, a former Cal classmate—Robbie Jones, in fact—called to tell him about an open casting call for a dream role: Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. On a whim, the 6’11” academic sent in his first-ever audition tape. Soon, he was back on the court, this time acting in the HBO series Winning Time. The show’s final season aired in 2023, but Dr. Hughes may not be returning to the classroom anytime soon. This year, fans can catch him in Sweet Santa Barbara Brown—the short film he wrote and starred in—on the festival circuit, or in the Kevin James action comedy Guns Up.
Another son of Oakland, was a defensive back for Cal from 1999 to 2002. A first-round pick for the Raiders in 2003, he had a sluggish start. By 2010, though, his status was secure: A four-time All-Pro player, he was widely considered the best shutdown corner in the NFL and became the highest-paid defensive back in history. As for his acting chops, he discovered those shooting a Nike ad. The commercial’s director, Peter Berg—also the creator of Friday Night Lights—was so impressed he asked Asomugha to cameo on the show. He has since stayed booked and busy. In 2020, he starred opposite Tessa Thompson in Amazon’s period romance Sylvie’s Love. More recently, he starred in, co-wrote, and directed the 2024 film The Knife, a taut thriller that RogerEbert.com hailed as “a masterclass of tension and tragedy.” Asomugha has even made the leap to Broadway, producing shows and acting in a 2020 production of the Pulitzer Prize winner A Soldier’s Play.
While did not, in fact, go pro, he did first make his name as an Oakland high school athlete, playing basketball and running track for McClymonds High. In 2004, he came to Cal on a track scholarship, running hurdles for the Bears. It was a track teammate who “dared me to take an acting class,” Abdul-Mateen recently recalled on Good Morning America. The time onstage sparked something in him—and helped him overcome a stutter. Still, he remained committed to his first love: architecture. Post-college, Abdul-Mateen worked in San Francisco’s city planning department until 2010, when he decided to give acting a shot. (He credits Marshawn Lynch’s NFL stardom as inspiration. “I said, ‘There’s someone in the [TV] box that I know,’” he told GQ. “‘Oh, shit, I could be in the box, too.’”) Five years later, in the final year of his MFA program at Yale, he nabbed a role in Netflix’s hip-hop series The Get Down. In the decade since, he’s been in a horror hit (Candyman), a superhero blockbuster (Aquaman), a musical (The Greatest Showman), and an Oscar nominee (The Trial of the Chicago Seven). He’s also an Emmy winner (Watchmen) and a Tony nominee (Topdog/Underdog). As for his current hurdle time? Unfortunately, Abdul-Mateen could not be reached
for comment.
Hayden Royster is a playwright and journalist from Oakland.
