WEST ORANGE, NJ — If you haven’t seen Nike’s new commercial featuring a young LeBron James getting his first tattoo, “Chosen 1,” in Las Vegas, you will. And when you do, you’ll be seeing West Orange High School senior and actor Dane Clarke II playing James thanks to some ingenious CGI.
“Chosen 1” was the name of the article that appeared in Sports Illustrated on Feb. 18, 2002, featuring then high school junior LeBron James. The commercial takes place in Las Vegas in August 2002 with the young James entering a tattoo parlor to get his first tattoo. After questioning his choice, the tattoo artist begins preparations to tattoo the young man’s back.
As the 45-second commercial ends, the screen goes black and the words “Always Believe” appear on the screen with the Nike swish.
When Nike debuted the commercial in a tweet, they explained the message of the commercial: “It’s one thing to put words on your back. It’s another to live up to them.”
As of June 1, the commercial already had 5.4 million views on YouTube and Clarke was excited to share the story.
“I was getting ready for a fitting for an Instagram commercial I booked, and my agent emailed me last minute seeing if I can make it to a Nike audition to play LeBron James as a teenager. I rushed to New York City and stopped at the Nike audition first, but I was barely thinking about it because I was hyped that I booked an Instagram Ad!” he said.
“I did the first audition for Nike but didn’t think anything about it. I kind of just walked in, auditioned, and headed to my wardrobe fitting,” he continued. “A few days later, my agent emailed me saying I got a callback. I left school early to go to New York City and I auditioned for the casting director and he put me on Skype for the producers. I felt like they really liked me because they were cracking jokes and having fun on the webcam.
“Monday afternoon during lunch period I was in the library studying and I got the email saying I booked it and that Nike was flying me and my mom out to Los Angeles the next morning. I jumped out of my seat and everyone stared at me in the library!” he said. “I flew to L.A. with my mom on May 1 and shot the commercial on May 3, returning to West Orange on May 4. We shot for 10 hours and an hour of that was doing the facial scanning for the CGI/motion capture. I had to get my face scanned while doing certain facial expressions so that they could match it to LeBron.”
Clarke said that shooting the commercial was “definitely an experience.” He will be attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for acting in the Stella Adler Studio in the fall.
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