In Alex Bendo’s TV pilot In My Blood, a baseball player is under extraordinary pressure and takes steroids to ensure that he won’t disappoint his father, but isn’t prepared for the implications and how it will transform him.
Awards Buzz spoke with Bendo about the twin interests that led him to create this project:
“I’ve always been obsessed with two things in my life, and it’s been genre cinema and baseball. But those things literally have nothing to do with each other, and I thought, okay, if I could ever get a project off the ground that incorporated these two things, I would be doing something right. But it was difficult to figure out what that was. So, in film school at NYU, I had read this book called Juiced by Jose Canseco, a famous baseball player who exposed steroids in the sport, essentially, through this book. I just went down these rabbit holes of obsession with steroids in baseball. I grew up in New York City during the steroid era, and my favorite player was Alex Rodriguez, so it always was around this whole steroids thing. As I started learning more about everything that Jose was talking about in the book, I realized it was actually far more monstrous than I thought. You’re physically and mentally altering yourself, taking these drugs in the pursuit of success in the sport. So it became quickly clear to me that there was a genre way into baseball, and it was through steroids, basically.”
Watch the video above to hear about the genres Bendo likes most, the filmmakers he cites as inspiration, and what his plans are for this project going forward following its premiere at SXSW.
In My Blood makes its world premiere in the Independent TV Pilot Competition at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
