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Keanu Reeves and Jared Hollinger knew that launching a motorcycle racing team was a big undertaking.
the speed The actor met Hollinger — who raced motorcycles as a child until the age of 34, eventually launching his own custom bike-building company — in 2009, when Reeves commissioned Hollinger to build him a bike. Two years later, they founded ARCH Motorcycle, which aims to “challenge the perception of what an American motorcycle can be,” according to its mission statement. “Anything that impacts the ride, aesthetics, appearance or function is treated as an opportunity to innovate and improve the design.” The company focuses on enthusiast customers looking for a “fully immersive riding experience.”
After some time, the two started talking about getting into racing.
“We’re big racing fans,” Reeves says. Hollywood Reporter via Zoom from Europe, where he is currently touring with his band Dogstar. “It was just a fantasy, but I think with the motorcycle and the engine that we developed with ARCH Motorcycle, it became, ‘Oh, maybe this could be a reality.’”
Reeves and Hollinger identified the Super Hooligan racing series, created by Roland Sands in collaboration with MotoAmerica, as a series that was a perfect fit for their bike. They also saw an opportunity to not only tell the story of their journey but also bring attention to the sport by depicting it in a documentary series; The result is a six-part series titled Hooligans: ARCH Racing Project with Keanu Reeves and Jared Hollinger, It’s scheduled to premiere on July 12 on Samsung TV Plus (Reeves and Hollinger are among the executive producers on the show, which is Samsung TV Plus’ first-ever original documentary series under the exclusives banner).
Early on, Reeves and Hollinger set out to assemble a team, including riders Corey Alexander and Jeremy McWilliams, who also appear in the TV series, which documents not only the successes, but also the setbacks as the team navigates its first racing season.
“In the series, you see the troubles and the challenges, and even with the idea that we knew we weren’t going to have any success in the beginning, we had a lot of hope,” Reeves says.
Were they worried about the possibility of failure when they set out to film their journey? “I had a belief that we could succeed, but I knew it wouldn’t come right away, and I knew it would take a lot of hard work and luck,” Hollinger says. THR via Zoom from his office in Los Angeles. “But that’s what makes any story interesting, isn’t it? If the story was all about success, would it be boring? We knew there would be a lot of trouble and failure.”
“But there’s also something I think we’ve learned, which is that there’s more to success than just winning,” Reeves adds.
Hollinger agrees: “There are successes in failures. If you look at it that way, you learn something from it.”
“I mean, they’re not as much fun,” Reeves says with a laugh. “But it can be rewarding.”
Over the course of a racing season, the team becomes what Hollinger calls a “mobile family” — a sense of community that extends to the entire sport. For his part, Reeves – who was much newer to professional racing than his veteran counterpart – felt it, too. “Everyone has passed [challenges] …. “For this common goal,” he says, “you get to know each other, you rely on each other, you ask each other questions.”
When asked if they felt any suspicion from the other teams, who are backed by the likes of motorcycle powerhouses including Harley-Davidson, Yamaha and KTM, Hollinger and Reeves said they felt welcomed into the fold.
“I think some people were shocked to see us there because of that [the perception was that] “We don’t build motorcycles to race,” Hollinger shares. “But then they were happy and supportive and, you know – ‘Go ARCH’.” He said there is a camaraderie within the racing community as competitors tend to celebrate each other’s successes.
Reeves adds that he felt more curious than other bands at first. “We were faced with a lot of questions,” he recalls. “We had a lot of people coming around, taking a look at the bike, and it was like they were smiling and saying: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And then they were looking at it and checking us out, smelling us, looking around. It’s easy to cheer when your bike breaks down and you come in 10th.
After the ARCH team began to see some success, Reeves said he heard another team joke that they would try to build an “ARCH killer.”
On the show, Reeves asked Hollinger at one point: “What are we getting ourselves into?” Looking back, the pair say they were aware of the challenges, but “I didn’t expect that we would be trying to run our bike with a motorcycle,” Reeves quips of one early race where everything seemed to go wrong.
Hollinger adds: “The amazing thing about motorsport and racing in general is that there are no delays. The race is on this day at this time, and if you’re not in it, you’re not part of it. So it’s not like a lot of other things where you can just go out on the road for another day or another hour. When the green flag drops, if you’re not there, you’re not part of it.”
The team deals with some stressful moments as seen in the show. Hollinger says his stress level is “pretty much up to 11 all the time” during races. Reeves, who considers himself a source of positivity and encouragement to veterans and veterans on the team, jokes that he suffers from “a unique pressure — fan pressure.”
Reeves becomes more serious as he observes the real challenges and dangers inherent in the sport of motorcycle racing. He says the pair felt a huge responsibility to their riders, Alexander and McWilliams, to not only deliver a motorcycle that could compete at a professional level but also to look out for their safety.
“The pressure, the expectations, the hope of giving them a motorcycle, giving them a chance, racing the race, all the failures we had, the bike breakdowns, the accidents – [there was] they [to make] “Certainly, Corey was OK, and Jeremy was OK. That pressure was the part that felt really real,” Reeves says.
Hollinger agrees, noting that both ARCH riders remain incredibly humble about the team’s successes, despite the big role they play in any wins or positions.
“The riders are always very humble too; you say to them: ‘Great ride’, and they say: ‘All I had to do was get on the bike and ride it,'” he marvels. “They’re the ones risking their necks, literally, and so we want to give them the best chance to succeed and the safest chance to succeed — as safe as you can be in that situation.”
Hooligans: ARCH Racing Project with Keanu Reeves and Jared Hollinger It premieres at 9pm ET on Sunday, July 12, on Samsung TV Network, the flagship channel of Samsung TV Plus. New episodes will air every Sunday until August 16.
In addition to Reeves and Hollinger, executive producers are Sharon Hollinger, Carter Skeith, and John Stevens, and Alan Bloom serves as showrunner. The show is produced by V10 Entertainment, which Reeves credits for playing a key role in helping find sponsors and working closely with Moto America.
