WASHINGTON - Does Mike Paschall have personality to go with his punch? Could the boxer's profile make for must-see TV?
Michelle McNulty wanted to know.
So the casting director for NBC's upcoming reality boxing series, The Contender, grilled Paschall: Are you a racist? Have you beaten women? Would you call yourself white trash? "No," the fighter answered to all of the above, but the questions nevertheless stung like jabs from Muhammad Ali.
"It was about as rough as any fight I've been in," said Paschall, 24, shaking his head as he left the interrogation during a recent casting call for the show in Washington. "All those personal questions. It was like being in front of the feds."
But the intrusiveness of McNulty, who has cast the unscripted series Big Brother and Survivor, is nothing compared with the cameras that will scrutinize Paschall's daily life if he's one of the 16 fighters picked for the show.
Scheduled to air in January, the show is boxing's version of Survivor and The Apprentice - which is no coincidence because all three are produced by Mark Burnett. Scheduled to air in January, The Contender is co-produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks SKG films and Sylvester Stallone of Rocky fame.
Producers promise to leave virtually nothing in the contenders' lives off-limits.
"This is a show about stories of regular guys who have problems with relationships - girlfriends, wives, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles - the whole fabric of their lives," said co-producer Bruce Beresford-Redman, Burnett's assistant.
"Some guys will try to keep things secret from us, but most won't be successful doing that," said Beresford-Redman, who attended the D.C. tryout. "By virtue of coming on the show, you're going to be filmed most of the time as you live in our world - even in the most intimate situations."
For Paschall, that would mean the nation would know, for example, that he grew up fatherless and that he has a 4-year-old son by one woman and a child by a different woman on the way.
America would know that the Pasadena resident caused his mother "a lot of pain" thanks to several arrests as a youth on charges that include handgun possession, armed robbery and assaulting a police officer.
It would know that Paschall, a pipe fitter, was thrown out of four Baltimore City schools and finally banned from attending any of them. And it would know about his tattoos, particularly the one of his son, Mikey, on his left bicep, and the other of his girlfriend, Amy Hill, on a very private body part.
