President Donald Trump took a quick detour while hosting the Kennedy Center awards dinner on Saturday evening to share why honoree Sylvester Stallone was the perfect guy to star in Rocky — because he wasn’t fat.
Trump told the crowd that several studios were interested in making the 1976 Oscar winning flick, but they wanted to have a “top” actor in the lead role, not Stallone. A number of Hollywood A-listers at the time were considered, including Burt Reynolds and James Caan, although Trump did not name anyone in particular.
“But the stars didn’t have good bodies. They were flabby,” Trump said. “They were not really boxers.”
He continued a moment later, saying one unnamed movie star was pegged to play the iconic role of boxer Rocky Balboa.
The studio boss then realized, “He can’t play the role — he had a lot of flab around the upper-chest area. It’s supposed to be solid like a rock.”
That ended up working out well for Stallone, Trump said. Stallone wrote the script and was being offered big bucks to sell it — but Stallone held firm, insisting he wanted to star in the movie.
“Finally they looked at Sly and said ‘Oh, you’re in good shape. You think you could play the role?”” Trump said on Saturday.
The president then applauded Stallone for the other movie franchise he is known for, Rambo. Stallone, on his end, previously hailed Trump as the “Second George Washington“ after he won the 2024 presidential election.
Trump’s amusing comments on the Rocky backstory came as he honored several other medal winners, including Kiss, country star George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, and Michael Crawford.
He also took a swipe at Jimmy Kimmel a little earlier in the evening, saying the ABC host was “horrible” and that, if he did a worse job hosting the event than Kimmel did hosting the Oscars, he did not deserve to be president.
Watch above.
