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Q&A: UConn basketball alum Renee Montgomery talks upcoming Christmas film, acting aspirations

Former UConn women's basketball standout Renee Montgomery, who now plays for the Atlanta Dream, is acting in an upcoming movie called "Not My Favorite Christmas."
Patrick Raycraft / Hartford Courant
Former UConn women’s basketball standout Renee Montgomery, who now plays for the Atlanta Dream, is acting in an upcoming movie called “Not My Favorite Christmas.”
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This holiday season, you may be getting a surprise visit from Renee Montgomery.

The UConn alum and Atlanta Dream guard will be showing up on your TVs and laptops next week in her acting debut in a short film that can be streamed with Amazon Prime.

Montgomery started nearly every game of her Huskies career, averaging 13.3 points before being selected fourth overall in the 2009 WNBA draft. Now 32, Montgomery has spent time with the Minnesota Lynx, Connecticut Sun, Seattle Storm, and most recently the Dream where she averaged 10.3 points and 3.2 assists last year.

Last month, Montgomery tweeted an announcement to her followers: she was pursuing acting alongside basketball. That tweet was followed up by another just a few days later detailing what she’s acting in — a Christmas movie called ‘Not My Favorite Christmas.’

As she prepares for her first short film to be released while working on multiple other projects, Montgomery talked to The Courant about her interest in acting and what the future holds. The following is a transcript of that conversation that’s been edited for clarity.

Q: Is acting something you’ve always been interested in?

A: “Yeah, it has. I was interested when I was younger but I didn’t want to waste a blessing, essentially, so I ended up pursuing basketball pretty heavy. And when I was younger it was just a ‘It would be cool to act.’ It wasn’t necessarily like an ‘I’m going to act one day.’ It was more like a ‘I think that would be something that I’d like to do.’ As I got older, you know, I played basketball a lot and basketball took me places so I was basically focused on that and I was in cities where it was hard necessarily to pursue [acting]. Now that I’m in Atlanta … it’s easier to pursue.”

Q: Is this the first thing that you’re going to be acting in?

A: “It’s the first thing that you’ll see me acting in. I’ve actually done some other projects that haven’t been released yet, and I’m actually still filming some more projects, but this is the first one that you all will see.”

Q: What details can you give readers about the film?

A: “The movie is called ‘Not My Favorite Christmas.’ It’s a short film. I’m not positive how long it’s going to run, but around the 30 minute timeframe, and it will be streaming on Amazon Prime starting on Dec. 20.”

“I love Christmas so for me it was a super fun project because I love Christmas. I put my tree up and everything — I get in the holiday spirit early. I basically skip Thanksgiving and I’m on Christmas, so it was a fun project for me and it will be fun to watch with my family.”

Q: What’s the most challenging part of acting?

A: “One of the hardest things about acting is that I’m basically starting from the bottom, and essentially I’ve worked my whole life to be a professional WNBA player — which is the best league in the world for women’s basketball — so now I’m starting a whole new profession and I’m starting at the bottom. That’s the hardest thing, which is actually very interesting to me and intriguing.”

Q: What were some challenges that came up in filming this project that maybe you didn’t expect or weren’t prepared for?

A: “Well this film was interesting because, as I told you, it’s a short film. We shot it in two days, so the challenging part with that was we put in some hours. We put in a lot of hours in those two days, and I’m a pretty high energy person so for me it wasn’t so hard but keeping the energy up on set would’ve been one of the challenging things. We did a party scene and there’s a lot of people there, so just keeping the energy up of the group was one of the challenges.”

Q: Do you see yourself doing more acting when your WNBA career eventually winds down?

A: “I would love to. That’s why I wanted to start now. I don’t want to get to a point where I decide that it’s time for me to retire from basketball and then I’m at the ‘Now what?’ stage. I want to make a smooth transition no matter what I’m doing in any realm, so I wanted my transition from college to the WNBA to be smooth. I’ve always liked smooth transitions, so this was me making sure that I have a smooth transition when that time comes.”

Q: How important is it to show people that players have interests outside of the sport?

A: “Being a WNBA player, we’re trained to be disciplined. So a lot of the things that make you successful — not only in sports, but in life — we’ve already learned those. We’ve learned how to be disciplined in what we do, disciplined in what we eat. We’ve learned how to be focused on tasks. We’ve learned how to plan for a goal and achieve goals. We’ve learned those things in sports, so when we decide we want to pursue other things we already have a built in blueprint for success. Athletes are typically one of the better groups that you should seek out when you’re trying to do a project because we’ve already learned traits that help you be successful.”