While we’ve come to know Utkarsh Ambudkar for his roles in Ghosts and Free Guy, before he was on screen, he was part of the freestyle rap group Freestyle Love Supreme. The crew also included Hamilton OGs like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson too. These days all these talented performers and producers have gone on to create their own projects. Although, when Ambudkar made his film on the 2023 movie schedule, World’s Best, he got a few of the FLS crew back together, and he opened up about how the rap group influenced his Disney+ movie.
World’s Best is a movie about a kid who learns that his late father was an emcee, and it has a couple of FLS members featured in it with Christopher Jackson and beatboxer Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan both popping up. On top of the cameos, Thomas Kail, who directed Hamilton and was a co-creator of the freestyle rap group, produced the new Disney+ movie. Speaking about these connections, Utkarsh Ambudkar explained how his time with Freestyle Love Supreme impacted his movie, telling CinemaBlend:
The love part for sure. You know, I came up in the battle scene, which was very ego-driven. By the way, Shockwave, Chris Sullivan, also has a cameo in the movie as our beatboxer at the Leopard Lounge. But FLSs Tommy, Chris, Lin, Anthony [Bancroft], and so on and so forth. They sort of taught me how to express myself in a joyful way to take the ego out of my creativity and really try to be inclusive and bring a lightness of being to my work. So, all credit to them as well for that spirit.
This Disney+ movie 100% has the joyful energy that you can feel watching Freestyle Love Supreme do their thing. In their documentary, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme (which is available with a Hulu subscription), that love radiates off the screen, and their adoration for what they do is infectious. You can see the crew, including Ambudkar, perform below:
There’s a similar FLS energy in World’s Best, and as Ambudkar said, that’s in part thanks to his time working with folks like Miranda, Kail, Jackson and Sullivan.
Freestyle Love Supreme is made up of lots of theater names you’ll likely recognize. Along with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson, another Hamilton star who was featured in the improv crew was Daveed Diggs who went from experimental hip-hop to Broadway, and has now appeared in massive projects like The Little Mermaid. Utkarsh Ambudkar’s career has also flourished since he started off in the freestyle troupe, and now he’s marking another professional milestone with World’s Best being the first project he’s simultaneously written, produced and starred in.
Along with his sincere answer about how FLS influenced his new movie, Ambudkar also threw some light-hearted shade at his pals, proving that they are all really great friends as he joked:
But you know, they should thank me for giving them a job, because let's be honest, Tommy needs it.
As a Hamilton fan, this made me crack up. This is mostly because Thomas Kail is probably the last person who needs a job. He not only directed the smash hit historical musical, he also helmed the revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Broadway, and he’s set to direct the live-action version of Moana…and that’s just scratching the surface of what the producer has done.
Overall, there’s a stellar team supporting Utkarsh Ambudkar for this film that's all about the joy and love a father and son share as they bond over their rap. Knowing this makes World’s Best even more meaningful because it’s clear that a lot of care and adoration went into the film considering the actor/writer/producer’s history with Freestyle Love Supreme.
To stream this fun movie that features some epic rap numbers all you need is a Disney+ subscription, because World’s Best premieres on the platform June 23.
