How Gotham Chopra, son of the New Age guru, became sports’ go-to documentarian (2024)

Gotham Chopra is frank in his acknowledgment that his dad’s global celebrity opened doors.

Yet it was the younger Chopra’s talent that got him inside to stay once the door was open.

Chopra, the son of renowned New Age alternative medicine author and speaker Deepak Chopra, has carved out his own notable career as an Emmy-winning sports documentarian whose work as a director and producer includes collaborations with Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, LeBron James and other elite athletes.

Chopra and Brady’s latest collaboration is a short-form unscripted Apple TV+ series called “Greatness Code” that debuts Friday. The seven-part series focuses on what athletes believe are pivotal moments in their careers, and features Brady, James, Alex Morgan, Usain Bolt, Shaun White, Katie Ledecky and Kelly Slater. The series is a joint production between Chopra’s Religion of Sports content studio he co-founded with Brady and Michael Strahan in 2015, and with the Uninterrupted company launched by James and Maverick Carter.

“Greatness Code” becomes part of Chopra’s sports documentary canon, which includes “Kobe Bryant’s Muse” and “Tom vs. Time” and an ESPN “30 for 30” episode about iconic Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar.

So how did Chopra end up as a sports documentary maker?

It started with being a diehard fan. He was born in Boston in 1975 after his parents emigrated from India in 1970, and while his dad was evolving from an internal medicine specialist to guru, the younger Chopra was reveling in the success and failures of his hometown Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots and Bruins.

His father, whose fame built through the 1980s and exploded in the 1990s (along with plenty of criticism), is not a sports fan but encouraged Gotham and his sister, Mallika, to follow their passions.

“My dad did not know anything about sports, but somehow I was an addict,” Chopra said. “My cultural assimilation as an American was primarily the Celtics because they were the only (consistently) successful Boston team in the 1980s.”

Sports as a career wouldn’t come until much later.

After graduating from Columbia University with an English degree, Chopra took a reporting job at Channel One News, which was a news service broadcast in U.S. school classrooms nationally from 1990-2018. Chopra said one of the network executives was a fan of his father and wanted to hire the son to provide a softer edge to the channel’s reporting – but Chopra wanted to do hard-hitting journalism from the field and follow the path of Channel One News veterans such as Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling.

He ended up reporting from around the world, including hotspots such as Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, he said.

“It was everything that was opposite of my spiritual background,” he said.

His years at Channel One News, which had small or one-person camera crews and made early use of digital technology, gave him the hands-on education that would aid his eventual transition to filmmaking.

“I learned very hands-on then. You document stuff yourself. You’re behind the camera, producing, writing. From a skill set, I learned early on how to story-tell,” Chopra said. “It served me later as I started to do what I do now.”

After 9/11, he decided he wanted to do something different.

“I was growing up and got married in 2002. That type of lifestyle and sort of job was not conducive to being married and thinking about kids,” he said.

For a time, he ventured into the comic book market in India, a business that began with involvement from wealthy entrepreneur Richard Branson. After that, Chopra said he then aided Al Gore’s launch of Current TV as a consultant.

By 2010, he wanted to get back to storytelling in America. His journalism work was the foundation, and the privilege of growing up around celebrities — he was a longtime friend of Michael Jackson — would help, too. But he started with what he knew best: One of his first works as a documentarian was spending a year following his dad around for 2012’s “Decoding Deepak” that aimed to reconcile the public personality from the father and husband at home.

“Here he is to the world and his global following, and here he is to me,” he said.

Not long after that, he ended up seated next to Kobe Bryant at an L.A. charity event and the two struck up a conversation, which Chopra remembers mostly as friendly trash-talking between a Lakers star and a lifelong Celtics diehard.

“I could trash talk on those teams and go deep with him, so we developed a friendship and chemistry,” Chopra said.

Bryant soon called him to talk basketball, with the “Black Mamba” breaking down film with him. Bryant showed him why he considered Larry Bird the sport’s greatest pump-faker – to the delight of the Celtics fan in Chopra.

That would lead to a long and often arduous collaboration that would become the well-regarded “Kobe Bryant’s Muse” that debuted on Showtime in 2015. It recounted Bryant’s long journey back from injury while delving into his motivations and controversies.

“That project over the course of two years, as it intensified, I got to know him and his family and his story,” Chopra said.

The filmmaker said he was in the room when a doctor told Bryant that a shoulder injury may have lifelong consequences, and one of the greatest athletes of all time suddenly had to start thinking in earnest about life after basketball.

That led to Bryant doubling down on the documentary, including calls and texts to Chopra at all hours when he wanted to get something on camera. It became confessional for Bryant, Chopra said.

That, and Bryant’s combative nature with teammates and collaborators, made for a painful but ultimately worthwhile project.

“There were times I was like, “Holy sh*t, I don’t know if we can use this.’ That set the bar for me. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” he said.

The next link in Chopra’s career chain was Tom Brady. The men had met in California and become friendly, and after years of resisting ideas for interviews and projects, Brady relented on the idea of turning 40.

“I think he had something he wanted to say, to prove, so that became the catalyst,” he said.

That led to the creation of Religion of Sports with Brady and former New York Giants great Strahan, with the goal of explaining why sports are so important to people and how athletes think, train, perform and more.

Religion of Sports produced “Tom vs. Time,” which racked up more than 100 million views on Facebook and won an Emmy.

“I always had a fascination with what sports mean. Why do we love them so much? Why do I love them so much,” Chopra said.

The company’s original content includes its documentary series, “Stephen vs. the Game” with Stephen Curry that aired on Facebook Watch, and “Shut Up and Dribble” with LeBron James and others on Showtime. There are now also Religion of Sports podcasts and a weekly newsletter.

Brady has formed his own content studio called 199 Productions and it’s working alongside Religion of Sports as Chopra directs the 10-part docuseries “Man in the Arena” about the six-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback’s life and career. It’s slated for a 2021 premiere on ESPN.

Another Chopra-Brady co-production is a 3D IMAX football documentary called “Unseen Football” about the game’s influence on American life, tentatively scheduled for next year. It’s being done in collaboration with the Russo brothers, who directed the final two blockbuster Marvel movies, “Avengers: Infinity War (2018)” and “Avengers: Endgame (2019).”

Also in the works is a project with Russell Westbrook, whom Chopra said he accompanied to anti-police brutality protests in Los Angeles, and another Facebook Watch documentary whose subject has not yet been disclosed. He’s also been trying to land a project with global soccer star Ronaldo.

The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated work, but they are learning to adapt with all of their projects. He said he’s been able to do some live in-person filming, but there also are Zoom interviews and other remote work. It’s just part of the current normal.

“We’ve adapted. It’s a constant evolution,” he said. “At the beginning, when everyone was on lockdown, not leaving our houses, I was trying to be super diligent. Over time, we’ve become smarter on how to be safe. Our work is unscripted. An injury or pandemic and that becomes part of the story.”

That has meant being a one-man camera crew at times. He filmed Brady himself earlier this year practicing in Florida for his new role as Tampa Bay’s quarterback after 20 seasons in New England.

How does working with Brady compare to Kobe?

“Kobe was combative. Kobe’s success, he was in combat with his own teammates,” he said. “That was his style, it’s what drove him and his teammates. Off the court, he was the same way. Everything felt like a creative fight to some extent. He would have strong opinions; I would have strong opinions.

“When he and Shaq were fighting, they won three championships. Those that stood up to him, like the Ron Artests and Lamar Odoms, became guys he trusted. I realized I had to fight with this guy. It was exhilarating working with him, it was exhausting working with him. But the product speaks for itself.”

Brady isn’t like that, he said.

“Tom is very different. Not a lot get in (to his inner circle). I developed a deep friendship from the start. We have similar experience in terms of marriage and kids, our oldest sons are the same age. My relationship with Tom is very different than my relationship with Kobe. Tom is very collaborative and trusting. As a filmmaker, as an artist, you adapt to the subject to get the best out of him.”

Chopra’s inspirations for his work behind the camera include notable directors such as Ken Burns, and those who have developed various technologies, like Errol Morris, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker who invented the Interrotron, a two-way monitor that allows an interview subject to look directly at the camera to see the person asking questions — like a TelePrompter for faces instead of words. He also credits ESPN’s “30 for 30” series along with the 2010 full-length documentary film “Senna” about Brazilian racecar driver Ayrton Senna, who died in the May 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Chopra is keenly aware that documentaries, especially in sports, often get criticized for painting a hagiographic portrait rather than an accurate one, warts and all. He shoots to get his subjects to talk about the darker things in their lives.

“These athletes are exceptional on the field, but they are human beings. They have mistakes, regrets, darkness, challenges. As much as the projects I have done have glorified their accomplishments, it’s important to throw light on the underlying relatability and vulnerability of who these people are,” Chopra said. “They are not perfect.”

(Top photo: Gabriel Olsen / Getty Images)