When Hollywood needs a table tennis scene, this couple serves aces
- - When Hollywood needs a table tennis scene, this couple serves aces
Greg RosensteinDecember 26, 2025 at 6:00 AM
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Wei Wang and Diego Schaaf turned their table tennis backgrounds into a career consulting on Hollywood productions. (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
PASADENA, Calif. — When director Josh Safdie first approached him to help with “Marty Supreme,” Diego Schaaf genuinely couldn’t “put a face to the name” of the film’s star, he said.
“Do you know who Timothée Chalamet is?” Schaaf wrote in a text to his 20-year-old niece. “We’re going to be working on a movie with him.” Her response was just three letters: “O.M.G.”
Few are likely to pick Schaaf, 71, out of a crowd, either. But since 1993, he and his wife, Wei Wang, 64, have built a name for themselves in Hollywood helping A-list stars like Chalamet become table tennis pros.
The duo, who run Alpha Productions out of Pasadena, work as consultants for films, shows, commercials and music videos involving table tennis. Their credits include “Forrest Gump,” “Friends” and “Balls of Fury,” among other projects.
Diego Schaaf, 71, repping swag from "Marty Supreme." (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
A24’s “Marty Supreme,” a buzzy Oscars contender that debuted widely in North American theaters on Christmas Day, depicts a fictionalized version of the career of mid-century table tennis champ Marty Reisman. To transform into the character Marty Mauser, a U.S. table tennis star whose dream is to win the world title, Chalamet had to pass as a world-class player.
The first step: assessing Chalamet’s table tennis skills.
Chalamet reportedly spent about seven years training; he told the BBC that he took his table tennis table into the desert while he was filming “Dune” and on the set of “Wonka.” He even practiced table tennis as he learned guitar for his role in last year’s Oscar-nominated Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.”
But it wasn’t until June 2024, just months before shooting for “Marty Supreme” began in New York City, that Schaaf and Wang entered the fold.
“We watched [Chalamet] play, and we wanted to see how we can make a pro player out of that,” Schaaf said. “Do we have the confidence that he has the athletic ability to do it? I saw him hit for a couple of minutes. ‘Yeah, he can do it.’”
Schaaf grew up playing table tennis in Switzerland, but never ultra-competitively. His real love was music. He moved to the United States in 1979 to pursue a career as a guitarist and later transitioned to sound engineering and video production.
His job now focuses mostly on choreography and making sure the overall production on the projects he and Wang work on is high-quality. For “Marty Supreme,” Schaaf did everything from hiring top-tier players for a tournament scene to finding equipment used only in the 1950s to crafting storylines.
“The development of points had to be right, and the intensity had to be right. It all had to match the rest of the story, and [Safdie] had a vision of that,” Schaaf said. “We had a lot of conversations going back and forth — what the point development had to be, which point should be when, when the tension had to build — but then also not make it like a regular sports movie. ... Show it in a cinematic way so you feel like you’re in a tournament. It feels real.”
Wang, meanwhile, is the hands-on expert in teaching actors form and technique. Wang, originally from Beijing, learned tennis when she was 10 years old and eventually rose to be the No. 5-ranked player in the country.
Wei Wang, 64, teaches actors table tennis form and technique. (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
Despite the accolades, she was never chosen for the national team and retired from the sport in 1983. Four years later, Wang moved to the United States for new opportunities and continued playing table tennis casually — but then her competitiveness returned. She first played in local tournaments — where she met Schaaf, a fan at the time — and then national. In 1995, she and Lily Yip became U.S. national doubles champions, and in 1996, Wang qualified for the Olympic team.
Her elite skills helped her get enshrined in the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame in 2002. And it’s why Safdie entrusted Chalamet with her tutelage.
“He got the feet right very quickly, which is critical for a top player,” Wang said of Chalamet. “Everybody thinks table tennis is a hand [sport]. It’s your whole body. It’s like dancing — your whole body, your footwork, the timing. He got that.”
Whenever Chalamet was in Los Angeles, Wang and Schaaf spent about an hour and a half per session working on his overall technique. Chalamet trained once at the Pasadena Table Tennis Club and once at the Westside Table Tennis Center — which Wang and Schaaf run five days a week.
But the venues were “a bit too public for him,” Schaaf said, so they eventually moved to Chalamet’s house. They played on a table that was moved onto his tennis court.
To remember specific points in table tennis scenes, Chalamet gave them names.
Since 1993, the duo have worked as consultants for films, shows, commercials and music videos involving table tennis. (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
“How he wanted to understand the points. He gave the points names,” Schaaf said. “He got better and better at identifying different points and keeping them apart, which was important. Otherwise everything looks the same.”
Another unique aspect for Chalamet was playing without a ball. Some scenes in the movie use CGI, forcing him to move and swing without making actual contact.
While that may sound easier to do, there are a lot of intricacies involved to make it look right. For instance, if one player hits using a forehand, his or her opponent also needs to use a forehand and be in the right spot on the table for a return to look realistic.
“It was grueling, because when you play without a ball you never miss, so you keep going and going and going,” Schaaf said. “Those were super intense points. And he’d do one take after another after another.”
The process of coaching Tyler, the Creator — the rapper/actor who plays Marty’s friend and fellow player Wally — was quite different, Wang said. She worked with him two times total before filming. The first occasion, Tyler went straight from the airport to the table tennis club in West Los Angeles.
“He had never played before. Never even held a paddle. He didn’t know what to do,” Wang said. “The first day he played, he said, ‘This is great.’ And the next time I met him, the first sentence he said was, ‘Wei, I bought a pingpong table!’”
Schaaf and Wang have worked on “Forrest Gump,” “Friends” and “Balls of Fury,” among other titles. (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
After extensive practice, it was showtime. Schaaf and Wang were on set at Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey, as well as in Tokyo in February. Schaaf coordinated the design of the matches and worked with the 23 other table tennis players he brought in for background.
Wang stepped in on occasion during Chalamet’s filming to make sure “his stroke wouldn’t fall apart,” Schaaf said.
Both consultants attended the December premiere of “Marty Supreme” in Los Angeles at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, where, they said, they were blown away by what they saw.
“He brought exactly what we were hoping he would bring. And we knew it from the get-go, because he was so dedicated,” Schaaf said. “It’s difficult if somebody doesn’t really have the motivation, but he was so motivated. He would push more than we would.”
“We were very proud of him,” Wang added.
Now that they’ve wrapped up their work on one of the biggest films of the year, neither of them has any upcoming Hollywood projects. They said they have returned to their regular day-to-day job: running their local table tennis clubs on weekdays.
That is, until another filmmaker calls them with another compelling project.
“It was interesting when the [‘Marty Supreme’] producer called me, Anthony Katagas,” Schaaf said. “He says, ‘So, Diego, I hear you’re the only guy in the country who can do this.’ And I thought, “Well, yeah, it’s a small niche.’”
The couple said now that "Marty Supreme" has wrapped, they are back to running their local table tennis clubs on weekdays. (Maggie Shannon for NBC News)
Source: “AOL Sports”
