DETROIT — Before she became a Detroit broadcasting legend, Diana Lewis was a consumer reporter at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, where she received a phone call during a morning meeting from a young man who was looking to cast her in an upcoming movie he was making.

His name was Sylvester Stallone, and the movie was "Rocky."

"I enjoy your reporting; I've been following it. I like the way you handle yourself in situations," he told her. "Let me ask you this. Who's your agent?"

Lewis, who was 32 at the time, cupped her hand over the phone and explained the situation to the room: "There's a man on the phone," she said in a hushed tone, "he wants me to be in his movie, and he's asking who my agent is!"

Without missing a beat, Lewis' mentor at the station grabbed the phone: "Hello, this is Regis Philbin. I represent Diana Lewis," the man told Stallone. Philbin — then a co-host of "A.M. Los Angeles" at the time — brokered the deal on the spot; Lewis joined the cast of the film, and "Rocky" went on to become a part of Hollywood history.

That history is celebrated in "I Play Rocky," the uplifting, crowd-pleasing story of the making of "Rocky," which opens in theaters nationwide Nov. 20.

That phone call isn't part of the movie, but Lewis' scene in "Rocky" is, where she plays a local TV reporter interviewing young fighter Rocky Balboa while he pounds sides of beef with right hooks inside a freezing meat truck. Lewis is played in "I Play Rocky" by actress J Nycole.

Lewis went on to a trailblazing TV news career that included 35 years anchoring at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, with many of those years spent in the seat next to Bill Bonds. She's interviewed legends ranging from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to Aretha Franklin, and she spoke before the Michigan State Senate on organ donation legislation — in stocking feet, no less.

But she says her "Rocky" experience is among the highlights of her life, and she still calls "Rocky" her all-time favorite movie.

"I knew that it was going to be something very special," Lewis said by phone from her Farmington Hills home this week, recalling her role in "Rocky." "We just felt it; the emotion was in the air. Everything about it was very real, and you wanted to be there. You could feel someone in your neighborhood, you could feel someone who's trying to break through and be recognized, and let that underdog succeed. It felt like every bit of the most wonderful experience and opportunity of my life."

And now, thanks to "I Play Rocky" — and Nycole in particular — a new chapter in Lewis' "Rocky" history is being written.

Getting her shot

It was a report on refried beans that put Lewis on Stallone's radar.

She came to KABC-TV from WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, which is about 45 minutes east of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where Lewis was born and where she once sat on the knee of Martin Luther King Jr. She made her on-camera debut in Philly in 1968, and she jumped to Los Angeles in 1974.

There, she was working on a story about cans of beans containing puncture weeds, and that's where a young Stallone noticed her.

When he rang the station, Lewis didn't know him or his work; at the time, Stallone was a virtually unknown actor who had written himself the lead part in "Rocky," about a young Philadelphia boxer trying to make his way to the top.

But hearing Stallone on the other end of the phone, Lewis immediately believed in him, and knew he had the right stuff.

"I knew from his voice, how he projected, what he had to say, that he was somebody. It was like listening to a symphony orchestra," she says. "You were just taken in by listening to this man."

Lewis was required on set for one long day of shooting.

"It was 17 hours in this warehouse," Lewis says. The scene took place in Philadelphia but was filmed in an industrial district in Los Angeles, and it was just as cold on set as it looks onscreen. "It was freezing!" Lewis says.

Stallone made her feel welcome on set and was professional, she says.

The scene called for Lewis to interview Rocky inside the meat truck for a live television report. Rocky's trainer, Paulie (Burt Young), is in the background, trying to get on camera himself, and Lewis has to shoo him away.

"If you feel like this guy is going to bother you, you do what you would naturally do," Stallone told her, trusting her in knowing how to play her role. "If you'd give him a look, if you want the shove the guy, whatever."

Young perked up. "You'd really shove me?" he asked Lewis, who shot back, "whatever I feel at the time; it depends on how you came at me," she told him, with a laugh.

"It was about me being me, and that's what was so magical about everything," Lewis says.

Rehearsals ran throughout the day, with the crew practicing where the camera would be placed and how the shot would be set up. "There were a million things to be done. It was a full day of angles and moving around," she says.

When it was time to roll, they did two or three takes, got what they needed, and that was a wrap on Lewis.

The day was "long but fulfilling," she says.

Stallone respected Lewis so much that he allowed her to use her own name onscreen during her scene. "Diana Lewis, in the meat house, with southpaw Rocky Balboa," she says in the movie, holding a microphone for fictional Philly TV station WUAC-TV News.

Lewis — who says she's proud to be the only Black woman featured in the movie — had a feeling "Rocky" would catch fire, and it did. The movie opened in New York on Nov. 21, 1976, and soon became a sensation, earning more than $117 million at the North American box office on a $1 million budget.

It was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three, including best picture, beating out "All the President's Men," "Taxi Driver," "Network" and "Bound for Glory." It spawned multiple sequels, and Lewis returned in 1990's "Rocky V," again playing a reporter interviewing Balboa ahead of a big fight. (Stallone and Lewis would meet again in 2006 when Stallone came to Detroit to promote the sixth installment in the "Rocky" franchise, "Rocky Balboa"; she interviewed him at the Kronk Gym during his visit.)

"I Play Rocky" focuses on the underdog story within "Rocky's" underdog story, the behind-the-scenes tale of how a young Stallone, feeling down and out, wrote "Rocky" for himself, successfully pitched it to execs, and then held out on numerous buyout offers to star in it himself.

It's directed by Peter Farrelly, whose "Green Book" won best picture in 2019, and it's considered a contender in several categories in the upcoming Oscar race, including best picture.

Lewis still gets residual checks from "Rocky," although they're not much; she says when they arrive, she uses them to treat herself to a small vanilla cone at Dairy Queen.

Now, "I Play Rocky" is another sweet treat for Lewis and her "Rocky" story.

Credit where credit's due

J Nycole is a Broadway actress who currently has a vacation swing role — meaning she can come in at any time and play any number of roles — in "The Book of Mormon."

She auditioned for the reporter role in "I Play Rocky" via video audition in August 2025 and spent around $50 on her look for her self-tape. "I was like, I need to look like Diana Lewis if I'm going to book this role," she says, and she did her hair and makeup and got jewelry to look the part. She got word that she won the role three weeks later.

Nycole, 43, grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, and started acting in drama club in high school; her first role was the lead part in a school production of "Stand and Deliver."

She was born Jessica Nicole Ralph, and she gave herself the stage name J Nycole, the Y being a tribute to New York. She currently lives in New Jersey.

Nycole hadn't actually seen the original "Rocky" when she auditioned, but she knew the story well enough from pop culture and the sequels that have been pumped out most of her lifetime.

"I knew the famous clips, I knew the song, I knew the story of the making of the movie," Nycole said by phone this week. "The movie itself, I wasn't as familiar."

In the "I Play Rocky" script, there was a bit of a discrepancy, and the Diana Lewis role was credited as Diana Lloyd, she says.

"When I stepped on set, I thought I was an actress named Diana Lewis who played a woman named Diana Lloyd," Nycole says. "So there was a bit of back and forth about that, and after discussion and research, we realized, 'Oh no, she was playing herself, she said Diana Lewis.' After that is when I went on a deep dive of finding out who this lady was. 'Oh my God, she played herself? Wait, let me find out more.'"

She looked up Lewis' IMDb and saw she reprised her role in 'Rocky V,' and she played a TV commentator in several other projects as well.

"Then after wrapping, I'm looking more into her, and I find out she is major in Detroit," Nycole says. "And then I find out she's won all these Emmys and she's this incredible human being who's done so much for the community, and she has this beautiful family, and that's when it really started to hit home how important she was. I was like, 'Oh my God, I hope she likes what I did with her role. I hope I did her justice! Then I became kind of scared."

The nerves dissipated, and Nycole went into advocate mode for Lewis. In the credits for "I Play Rocky," the Lewis part was credited as "reporter," and Nycole thought she deserved more.

"I was like, 'wait a minute, we can't just credit her in the credits as 'reporter' and her name is spoken twice in the movie. That's crazy!" she says. "I thought to myself, 'They say her name, but they don't credit her as her name, but she's a real person, and this is a biopic. This is weird.'"

By this point, everything had been shot, and Nycole didn't particularly feel like rocking the boat. But she said she felt like she had a good enough relationship with the two Peters — director Farrelly and writer Gamble — that she could make her case that her character should be officially credited as Diana Lewis.

So she spoke up, and she was heard. In the "I Play Rocky" credits the role is referred to as Diana Lewis, a small but important battle Nycole won in honoring her subject.

Nycole says the lesson she takes away from her "I Play Rocky" experience is similar to the theme of the movie itself. "Bet on yourself," she says. "That is something that I, kind of unknowingly, had to do. I didn't really have a choice. But also, advocate for yourself, advocate for what you think is right. And build those relationships too, so that what you have to say is heard, and it lands on fertile ground."

Lewis — who is credited in the original "Rocky" as "TV commentator" — has heard the story of how Nycole advocated for her to be credited properly in the movie and is deeply moved by her actions.

"I am honored to have a woman of such integrity playing me," Lewis says. "It is so touching. I want to hug her, I want to thank her."

She is hoping to meet Nycole to thank her in person. In the meantime, she is looking forward to seeing the movie, and she's planning to see "I Play Rocky" with her family on opening night.

It's been 14 years since she signed off from WXYZ — her daughter, Glenda, is currently an anchor at the station — but Lewis remains a favorite in the community and a legend to generations of TV viewers. She'll make an appearance during the Thanksgiving Day parade in Detroit later this month.

But "Rocky" remains a major part of her story. And thanks to the actress who fought for her, Lewis' "Rocky" role is solidified for the next generation of viewers.

Says Lewis of Nycole, "I love this lady."

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