Academy Award® and Grammy® award-winning actor and musician Jamie Foxx is the featured guest on this week’s episode of ALL THE SMOKE WITH MATT BARNES AND STEPHEN JACKSON. The episode was pre-recorded on April 23.
The multi-faceted entertainer opens up about his role in Just Mercy, the importance of social justice and how racism has personally affected his life. Foxx also discusses his career, from starring in In Living Color and The Jamie Foxx Show in the 90’s to his successes on the big screen including Ray, Ali, Django Unchained, and his upcoming film in which he will portray Mike Tyson.
In the lively interview, Foxx performs a variety of impersonations throughout and shares stories about recording a song with Kanye West, performing alongside Alicia Keys and acting with Leonardo DiCaprio. Foxx also discusses his sports fandom and days as a high school football player.
The episode is available now in video and audio formats on the SHOWTIME Basketball YouTube channel and on major podcast platforms including via the RADIO.COM app.
Please find quote highlights from the episode below.
On social justice and racial equality…
Foxx – “The one thing about social media, what it has done is pulled up the carpet. It lets us see something that we’ve known about for a long time. The sincerity in the racism. Now it’s wide open … The mayor of Georgia just posted these terrible words that someone DM’ed her…We’ve known about this for all our lives. Now, we’re dealing with it face to face.”
Foxx – “It’s important that we don’t get exhausted … Injustice will always rear its ugly head in the most inopportune times. Look at it now, we’re dealing with COVID and who are going to be the ones who are going to suffer the worst? We are. Because of the injustice. Because of the way we’re structured in society.”
On Al Pacino’s speech in Any Given Sunday…
Foxx – “Everybody remembers the Al Pacino speech, right? Here’s a fun fact. Al Pacino was having a tough time with that speech, because he ain’t never been around football. I knew football. So when he was trying to get that speech off, I said, ‘Hey Al, when you’re talking to these players, they’re not your players. They’re your family.’ I said ‘A lot of these players come from the hood, their only father is you so you’ve got to talk to them like it’s their father.’”
On being a supporting actor to Will Smith in Ali…
Foxx – “I always give props to Will Smith. He wanted me to play Bundini Brown in Ali… But I wouldn’t have had that opportunity had he not told the director, ‘Yo, I’m rocking with Foxx or I don’t do the film.’ Yeah, it’s big. That don’t happen in Hollywood. That don’t happen in our business…Being those characters alongside those guys, I wanted to be that Scottie Pippen. I wanted to be that person because I knew that if Will Smith is doing Ali, especially with Ali because it was so important and Will was such a big star and is such a big star, I was there to make sure that he didn’t have to worry about what I was doing. [That] part of the movie was going to be solid.”
On his upcoming movie portraying Mike Tyson…
Foxx – “I’ve watched Mike his whole career. And then I watched the good, the great, the bad and the ugly, and now this Mike. And so, I said, ‘Mike, you have to let me embody you. You have to let me tell your story.’ And so now, Martin Scorsese, who hasn’t done a boxing movie since Raging Bull has agreed to take on the helm. When we were talking about the movie, I said ‘What’s interesting about Mike is not the ring, it’s the Mike that we see now.’”
