In 2012, Paul Rudd held his first all-star bowling tournament to raise money for The Stuttering Association for the Young (formerly known as Our Time).
The experience proved so rewarding that the “Ant Man” and “Anaconda” star has hosted the event annually for 12 years straight.
“I got to know the kids, and I came to some of their meetings and learned about the foundation,” Rudd told Vanity Fair at the first event at Manhattan’s Lucky Strike.
Proceeds from the events fund vital programs such as free and sliding-scale speech therapy programs, the creative arts program Confident Voices, and Camp SAY — the largest summer camp in the world for kids and teens who stutter.
Rudd’s advocacy first began after he portrayed a character with a stutter in the 2006 Broadway play “Three Days of Rain.”
“I think playing a character who had a really bad stutter, I kind of — for the first time — really approached this affliction from the point of view of somebody who suffers from it,” he said.
Rudd himself didn’t grow up with a stutter, but he told Vanity Fair that he was often bullied.
“I started thinking how hard it is to be a kid anyway, how hard it is to kind of talk with anybody — regardless of how old you are — but then to have a stutter, and have to contend with bullies, and just general confidence and security, that is also shaky when you’re growing up,” Rudd explained.
“I just really was blown away by these kids and was awed by them, really. So much so that I’m now on the board, and the [Broadway] play ended, but I’m still involved with the group.”
Every year since, Rudd has assembled an annual all-star team — a rotating cast of comedians, actors, musicians, and more — to play alongside kids in the SAY program.
Past participants include Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anthony Rapp, Michael Shannon, Alex Brightman, Mariska Hargitay, and more.
But the spotlight is really on the kids.
“You’re in a group of people with the same issues and that gives you confidence,” 14-year-old Andrew Carlins told the Wall Street Journal at one of the events.
“I used to be shy to speak in front of my classmates and now I do it all the time,” added 11-year-old Klanell Lee.
For Rudd, who has over 70 acting credits in film and television, the SAY bowling benefit has become his longest-running project.
“I always think back to the very first SAY event that I hosted, a gala that they did,” Rudd told People Magazine in 2024. “A 7-year-old boy introduced me in front of hundreds of people onstage and he had a pretty intense stutter, and I was so knocked out by his courage and how amazing he was, I burst into tears within 10 seconds.”
“It was one of the most powerful things I've ever seen,” he added, “especially because this is not the kind of thing people think about very often.”
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Header image via 2024 Mikiodo / The Stuttering Association for the Young
