*Actor, Blair Underwood who is currently starring in A Soldier’s Play on Broadway, sat down with SiriusXM’s The Clay Cane Show.
During the interview, Underwood revealed how he initially turned down the role of Keith Weston in the 1996 classic film ‘Set It Off’ and said there was “pushback” in Hollywood at the time.
Host, Clay Cane: What are your memories on ‘Set It Off’?
Blair Underwood: When I first got that script, F. Gary Gray directed that film and I was directing videos back in the 80s and F. Gary Gray was my first AD (Assistant Director) he was the main person on the set that runs the set for my first four videos. So, this came about and I read the script and at the time I was playing Jackie Robinson in an HBO film and I was again, a very historical noble project and I read the first, I think 18 pages and I got to the scene where Jada was, she slept with this guy to make money to send her brother to college. And I said, I don’t want to do that, and I passed. And like a week or two later they came back and they said, why did you pass? And my manager read me the riot act when I told her. I said, well I didn’t actually finish reading the scripts. She said, boy, you better finish reading the script before you be passing on things. So I did, and then I saw the love story between the character Keith and Jada’s character, and then I also saw the love story, the platonic love story between these four women and how beautiful that was. And I said, now, I mean that was a lesson I never forgot. I’ll never pass on anything and have not since then before reading and know what you’re talking about. In context that scene with Jada had made sense, which he had to do to. She made a choice to send her brother to college so he’d have a better life. So, I remember that, but I also remember there was push back at the time at Hollywood because ‘Boyz ‘n the Hood ‘ had come out, Menace II Society and there were voices that didn’t want to see us only as gangster films and people would dismiss us initially when we’re shooting the film as, okay, now we’re going to do Girlz ‘n the Hood’. We got Boyz ‘n the Hood, now it’s Girlz ‘n the Hood. That’s all Hollywood wants to do. I just felt, in the hands of F. Gary Gray as the director, the vision he had, and I saw what these sisters were doing in terms of Vivica, and Queen and Dana and Kimberly Elise as well, and Jada, that they were just doing beautiful work as actors, and then to be able to portray a love story in the midst of that, I very much wanted to be a part of that, so I have fond memories.
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SiriusXM’s The Clay Cane Show (airs weekdays from 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET on SiriusXM Urban View channel 126).
source:
Chelsea Kaufman
Manager, Corporate Communications
[email protected]
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