Two years ago, Kauchani Bratt was like most college students and had no clue what might be next. He didn’t expect to pursue an acting career, let alone star in a buzzy Netflix drama premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival as his first job out of college. 

At the time, Bratt was studying philosophy at UC Santa Cruz when he saw an Instagram post about an open casting call for Rez Ball, Netflix’s basketball-focused feature produced by LeBron James’ SpringHill Entertainment. Although Bratt had no acting background aside from a couple of college courses to fulfill general requirements, the opportunity seemed tailor-made. After all, the part called for a Native performer with basketball experience, and Bratt, whose mom’s side is Quechua and dad’s is Coahuiltecan Nation, spent three years on his high school’s varsity team.

“I was trying to figure out, ‘What do I want to do for the rest of my life?’ ” Bratt tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I never thought about acting. But I knew how groundbreaking and special this project was going to be. I thought to myself, ‘I just want to be a part of this,’ even if it was just as a background character.”

As it turned out, he landed the lead. Rez Ball, premiering at TIFF on Saturday, Sept. 8 before hitting Netflix on Sept. 27, centers on a Native American high school basketball team from New Mexico fighting for a state championship after the death of their star player. Bratt plays Navajo basketball standout Jimmy Holiday in director Sydney Freeland’s sports drama that is inspired by author Michael Powell’s nonfiction book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation. Jessica Matten, Julia Jones and Amber Midthunder round out the cast for the movie that Freeland wrote with Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo. 

Raised in San Francisco, the 23-year-old Bratt understands the mindset of a character who lives and breathes basketball. After all, Bratt had played in reservation basketball tournaments since middle school, and his high school team won the respected Native American Basketball Invitational. He even transferred from San Jose State to a junior college after his freshman year to give his hoop dreams one more shot. When the pandemic hit, he took it as a sign that this wasn’t his path.

“That was the cool thing about this film, was that the basketball experience was required,” Bratt says. “One of the things that was really in my favor and helped me feel confident about getting my foot in the door was, I played basketball, I’m Native, all these things. Why not go for it?”

Despite lacking formal acting training, Bratt immediately began putting in the work. Throughout his audition process and in the time since, he has been taking classes at an acting studio in San Francisco, where he still lives, and reading such staples of the craft as Konstantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares and the work of Sanford Meisner. 

Slowly, Bratt is feeling like he belongs. “The first day of the Rez Ball shoot was probably the most nerve-racking and one of the hardest days,” he recalls. “This is my first time ever being on a set, ever doing anything at this level with acting, and I had no idea what to expect. Before I know it, I just melted into the story, and I was good to go.”

Luckily, he has had support along the way from a fan of his own: his uncle Benjamin Bratt. As an accomplished actor, the elder Bratt’s pointers during the audition process focused on encouraging his nephew to keep things simple. “With me having approached this with no real experience or training, we understood that the best thing for me to do is just to be myself,” Kauchani Bratt explains. “And once I got the job, he reminded me to respect people’s time, be kind to everyone, be professional, know my lines.”

Since landing Rez Ball, he has signed with a management company and started strategizing about what might be next, hoping to tackle sci-fi soon. But for now, Bratt — who completed his college degree after shooting the film — is focused on his big TIFF moment and grateful for what this film could mean for anyone like his younger self.

“I just know that if a movie like Rez Ball had come out when I was younger, I would have been so inspired and filled with so much pride,” Bratt says. “I’m hoping that maybe we can do that with this film for Native kids growing up.” 

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