Popular actor Jamie Foxx had joined hands with Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained (2012) and he had already become an established and well-respected actor. The Pulp Fiction director pleasantly left the experienced star stunned with how he dealt with his actors.
The nature of Tarantino’s Django Unchained, which also starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, and Samuel L Jackson in major roles, was typically loud and hilarious. However, the subject matter was pretty dark and serious, as the plot zooms in on a slave’s journey from being freed to going on a rescue mission to save his enslaved wife (Kerry Washington) from a corrupt plantation owner.
Tarantino, throughout the filming, ensured Foxx and Washington were doing okay. Recalling the whole experience, the 55-year-old said [via IMDb]:
“It was really different because Hollywood is not like that. Hollywood is very much about getting the shot, getting it right, and moving on. Even when we’re shooting an incredibly difficult scene and we have to do a few takes, he’s just like ‘That’s alright, man. All we need to do is get it right, one time. It’ll work.’ When you have a director like that, it speaks volumes.”
However, the early days of filming weren’t that smooth. In fact, Tarantino had a little outburst in his attempts to explain the theme of the movie to Foxx.
Django Unchained is features some elite talents, and Waltz even won an Academy Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of a bounty hunter. But the whole movie depended on the character arc of Foxx’s Django, who was supposed to go from a slave to a hero.
However, Foxx apparently didn’t get the gist of his character on the first day of the movie’s rehearsal, leading to Tarantino giving him a piece of his mind. During an interview with Howard Stern on The Howard Stern Show, he said:
“On the first day of rehearsal, I’m reading my lines like [hums] and he said cut and closed the door and was like ‘umm, what the f*ck was that?’ I said ‘what do you mean?’ He said ‘I knew I was gonna have this problem. Listen, all of this sh*t – you have to be a f*cking slave. He’s a slave. He’s not cool, he’s a f*cking slave. He doesn’t know how to read.”
(H/t Fandom Wire)
