George Kittle is not a receiver, but he’s perhaps the most famous star of Netflix’s upcoming NFL show Receiver, the sequel to Quarterback. But it wasn’t his position that led the San Francisco 49ers tight end to hesitate about doing the show.
Kittle was nervous that it would be too invasive or a waste of his time but was pleasantly surprised by how the coproduction between Netflix, NFL Films, and Omaha Productions played out.
In an interview on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast, Kittle explained what finally convinced him and his wife to do Receiver and why the experience was so good for him.
“All this is going to do, it shows you an inside life, introduces people to your family, so I thought it was a cool thing,” Kittle said. “And it’s ran by Peyton (Manning) and the NFL, so anything that you weren’t a big fan of, you don’t have to include it. My wife Claire convinced me to do it, she was like, ‘Just think about in 10 years, you can go back and watch it, and you can show your kids this stuff.’ So I was like … that’s a fantastic selling point.”
Kittle got to decide what aspects of his career and his life were featured on the show and work with familiar faces.
“They used NFL Films on, and so most of the people I was working with, I had met multiple times,” Kittle explained. “They were all incredibly polite, and they were also only as invasive as you allowed them to be … and (San Francisco’s) studios handled all the in-practice stuff.”
Kittle also got to co-star in Receiver with his 49ers teammate Deebo Samuel, making the series a nice promotional opportunity for the team after a Super Bowl appearance.
With the oversight Omaha gave him, Kittle asked for certain camera angles of his wife as well as his preferred game footage to highlight the skill set he wanted to come through.
During the playoffs, Kittle said NFL Films did not come to his home at all. Cameras were not allowed in the training room or team facility.
So in the end, Kittle was not inconvenienced much at all. His only complaint? The season featuring five receivers versus just three QBs last year did not leave enough time to develop each plot line for each receiver.
