On a sunny but chilly spring morning, an eerie time warp seems to have settled over North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham.
Two sets of race cars speed along opposite sides of the track, each group a mirror image of the other — except one group is shiny and new, the other aged and scarred by accidents.
There are no fans jamming the spectator area, just cameras recording the action for “3,” a TV movie chronicling the life and career of driver Dale Earnhardt, who died in a 2001 crash. The movie, which stars Barry Pepper as Earnhardt, premieres Saturday on ESPN.
On this production day, as the crew breaks for lunch, Pepper heads to his trailer while an assistant fetches a plate of down-home North Carolina fare from a nearby chow wagon. Pepper himself would have been just as happy to stand in line with his castmates, but he’s a co-executive producer on this ESPN original movie, in which capacity he is sitting down with a reporter to talk about the project.
Virtually unrecognizable under the prosthetic makeup that transforms him into an unsettling ringer for Earnhardt, the 34-year-old Canadian actor is cordial but obviously very much aware of what is riding on this movie, not just for him, but for the late NASCAR champion’s family, friends and legions of fans.
“Dale was a fierce competitor who earned the respect of his fans the hard way,” says Pepper, who plays Earnhardt from ages 16 to 49 in the movie. “We wanted to do it right. I wouldn’t have done the movie if we couldn’t do it right.”
That’s not surprising, given that Pepper earlier had a vivid lesson in how high the stakes can be when an actor portrays a real person rather than a character spun from fiction.
The actor received widespread acclaim for his portrayal of baseball star Roger Maris in the 2001 HBO movie “61*,” and none of the cheers were louder than those from members of the Maris family, who had been chilly to the project until they saw the warmth and humanity Pepper brought to his performance.
“Of course, the stakes are higher (when you’re playing a real person),” Pepper says. “How could they not be? I would have to be incredibly arrogant not to recognize and respect the fact that I am playing someone who touched a lot of lives.
“It’s been a huge privilege to bring Dale’s legacy to film, and it’s been an immense challenge as well, just as I knew it would be,” he continues. “We’ve come here (to North Carolina) so we could shoot this movie in a lot of the places where things actually happened — sometimes even with the same people around. I think this is just about as close as we could get to the real thing, and I’m really, really proud of what we’ve been able to do.”
For sensitive viewers, or those with young children, be advised that Earnhardt’s final race is shown up to the point where his car begins to spin out of control, but the camera cuts away before the fatal crash and fades to a poignant conclusion that owes a debt to “Field of Dreams.” Have your handkerchief handy.
As a complement to “3,” the ESPN Classic channel airs “Three Days of Dale,” three full days of Earnhardt-related programming, from Thursday to Saturday.
