The director of 'The Last Dance' says one of the most intense and emotional moments from the series came 45 minutes into his first interview with Michael Jordan
- Michael Jordan's justification for treating his teammates with such intensity was one of the emotional highpoints of "The Last Dance."
- According to director Jason Hehir, the stunning moment came just 45 minutes into his first interview with Jordan.
- Hehir described the moment as a turning point in the making of "The Last Dance," as it showed that Jordan would be willing to have some uncomfortable conversations.
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Michael Jordan opened up in the most recent episodes of "The Last Dance," offering an explanation for why he sometimes treated his teammates poorly in practice.
After Jordan told stories of mocking Scott Burrell and getting physical with Steve Kerr, Jordan got a bit emotional, saying his actions were all for the sake of winning.
"When people see this, they're going to say 'Well, he wasn't really a nice guy, he may have been a tyrant,'" Jordan said. "Well, that's you because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well."
"I don't have to do this. I'm only doing it because it is who I am," Jordan said, getting choked up. "That's how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don't want to play that way, don't play that way."
It was one of the emotional highpoints of the docuseries so far, showing Jordan as vulnerable, rather than the dominance-personified demeanor he normally carries.
The moment came surprisingly early on in his interviews with Jordan
"That was stunning, because that only took place 45 minutes into our first interview with him," director Jason Hehir told ESPN's "Jalen and Jacoby" while discussing the episode. "So we're 45 minutes into an eight-hour, year-and-a-half process."
"I still have the sheet of paper or the 11 sheets of paper that I went into that interview with," Hehir said. "It's on like the second page, it's early in the interview. 'Is all of that intensity, and all of the success that you achieved, worth the cost of being perceived as a nice guy? Because by and large, in my estimation, you are not.'"
Hehir said that while Jordan was initially taken aback by the question, the further he delved into it, the more emotional he became.
"You can see his expression, I think he was a little bit surprised by the question," Hehir said. "He almost had this look like, 'Well I think I'm a nice guy, I don't know.' And then he started to get more and more intense. And by the end of that — I mean it's 45 minutes into the first interview — he was tearing up."
Hehir said that it was one of two moments that clearly brought out some real emotions from Jordan.
"It's funny, if you talk like, what are the things that elicit that kind of emotion from him? Showing him his mom reading a letter home from him — so his mom's voice, his mom's face, family elicits emotion from him. And his philosophy, how he lives his life, defending that — he is so adamant about that that he gets emotional about it."
At the end of his answer, Jordan called for a break from the interview. Hehir said that he went to the bathroom and tried to process what had just happened on set.
"I remember sitting there, splashing water on my face like, that's a moment that is going to be a powerful moment in this documentary. I don't know where it's going to go, we just started this process. We were two years from anyone seeing where we are now."
He went on to describe it as the moment that the project changed, as Jordan had made it clear early on that he would be willing to go places Hehir wasn't sure that he would be willing to tread.
"That was preceded 20 minutes before that by his belly laugh when I mentioned the traveling cocaine circus," Hehir said. "So he was willing to go there, and he was also willing to go here. And those were the two places that I was afraid that he wouldn't go — that he wouldn't be candid and tell me honest stories, and that he might not be as emotional and vulnerable as we wanted. And he checked off those two boxes in the first 45 minutes, so that's where the whole project changed."
Despite it being years before anyone would see the finished product, Hehir's instinct was right that the moment would prove to be one of the most riveting of the series, and used it to close out the seventh episode.
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