‘Every single thing in my life is built around race’
Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, snubbed this week during the Golden Globe nominations for his leading role in the upcoming slavery-era revenge fantasy “Django Unchained” says “every single thing in my life is built around race.”
“Django Unchained,” directed by Quentin Tarantino, features Foxx as a freed gun-toting slave on a revenge mission to hunt the men who sold his wife (played by Kerry Washington) to an evil slave owner (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). The movie, scheduled to open Christmas Day, is already generating controversy for its indelicate, and at times campy, treatment of slavery, as well as the amount of times the N word is used (by some counts, the word is used more than 100 times throughout the film).
In an interview in the December-January issue of Vibe, Foxx discussed how race plays into his job as an actor and how the movie is likely to be perceived among different racial communities.
“When I get home my other homies are like how was your day? Well, I only had to be white for at least eight hours today (or) I only had to be white for four hours,” Foxx told Vibe. “Everything we do is that. When you’re talking about the script, of course it’s going to be controversy,” he added.
Foxx says he’s anticipating some pretty sharp reactions to the movie, especially from the black community.