Ray McElrathbey has had 14 years to get used to the idea of a movie being made about his life, and he still doesn’t quite know how to react.
“It’s been a very interesting experience,” McElrathbey told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Surreal, to say the least. Taking everything in as it comes. I’d say I wasn’t prepared, but in a sense I was. It’s just that so much is happening, and it’s an amazing feeling.”
In 2006, McElrathbey, an Atlanta resident who played at Mays High School, was a sophomore safety at Clemson and brought his 11-year-old brother, Fahmarr, to campus with him. The McElrathbey brothers’ mother was battling drug addiction, and Ray didn’t think that being at home with her was the right environment for Fahmarr. Fearing that his brother would end up in foster care, Ray brought Fahmarr to live on campus during preseason camp.
It became a national story, and the NCAA approved a waiver that allowed Fahmarr to live with Ray in an off-campus apartment and established a trust fund to assist with expenses without jeopardizing his eligibility.
At the time, producer Mark Ciardi became aware of the story and thought it would make a good movie. He got in touch with Clemson and the McElrathbeys and eventually secured the rights. It took years to find the right landing spot.
“I (told Ray), ‘Listen, it could take a year, it could take five, 10, 15, 20 years, you never know.’ But I said, ‘I’ll always stay with it,’” Ciardi said. “We had a really solid screenplay, so when Disney-Plus launched their platform, and I had done a lot of movies for Disney, I just felt like this one could be really perfect for them. They agreed.”
Fourteen years after the story first made national headlines, it’s now the movie “Safety,” which premiered on Disney-Plus on Friday. Despite the amount of time it took to get the film made, McElrathbey still wasn’t sure how it would be received. Now, he said he’s been blown away by the response.
“Not knowing how the world would see my story or how it would be viewed or how it would be accepted, it was always questionable for me,” McElrathbey said. “I wondered what that would be like. To see how it’s been touching people and how it’s inspiring people is amazing.”
While movies based on a true story always have some characters or timelines changed to turn the messiness of real life into a two-hour film, both Ciardi and McElrathbey said the film is very close to how things actually happened. McElrathbey was heavily involved in the process from the beginning, and he said now he’s glad it worked out that way.
“I was on the set almost every day,” McElrathbey said. “I was involved when they were casting everyone as well as some of the writing. It’s been a 14-year process for me, just going back and forth about different things. I was very, very involved and I’m glad I was.”
The film captures everything from Ray initially being reluctant to accept help with Fahmarr all the way to the NCAA waiver hearing. In the final scenes, Fahmarr leads the Clemson football team down the hill from Howard’s Rock into the stadium — a scene that was filmed at halftime of a Clemson game last year.
“I was up in the booth with the commentators feeding in lines to say and everyone had this amazing perspective because it was so loud,” Ciardi said. “They said it was the third-loudest they’d ever heard the stadium. It is Death Valley for a reason, and it was thunderous.”
Fourteen years removed from the events of the movie, McElrathbey still speaks fondly of his “Clemson family” and everything they did for him and his brother. The McElrathbey brothers and their mother — who has been sober for years — now work together on Ray’s Safety Net Foundation to help others who are in similar situations.
“It’s a safety net just to try to help catch everybody that might slide through the cracks,” McElrathbey said. “Trying to change the world a little bit at a time.”
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