Jamie Foxx Explains That The Past Prepared Him For “Django Unchained”

Samuel L. Jackson, Quentin Tarantino and the “Django” cast have a discussion about America’s failure to deal with slavery. Media gathered around in New York City to question Quentin Tarantino’s cast starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington.

The movie’s plot is set in the pre-civil war America, while Django, Jamie Foxx, tells the story about a freed slave’s journey. He sets out to rescue his wife Broomhilda, Kerry Washington, from Calvin Candie, Leonardo DiCaprio.

“I wasn’t initially asked to play ‘Django,’” stated Jamie Foxx. “I actually saw the movie was already in production and someone else was supposed to play it. I thought, ‘Wow, here’s another project that I hadn’t heard about.’ After that, I had a management change.” Jamie Foxx grew up in Terrell, Texas and he states that he wasn’t pleased by the film’s gratuitous use of the n-word.

“I love the South. There are racial components in the South. You get called nigger growing up as a kid. When I read the script, I didn’t knee-jerk to the word ‘nigger’ like someone from New York or Los Angeles would knee jerk because that was something I experienced. What I did gravitate to was the love story of ‘Django’ and ‘Broomhilda.’ We never get a chance to see the slave actually fight back. When we started to shoot the film, we started to comment that these are the things that you get to see for the first time. For me, it was about the work and we knew coming into it that there was going to be a whole lot of other things said about it. But it’s been a fantastic ride.”

“I always wanted to do a movie that deals with slavery,” said Tarantino, who plays “Dr. King Shultz, a bounty hunter who enlists “Django’s” help in apprehending the fugitive “Brittle Brothers” and releases him from slavery in the process. “It seems to me that so many Westerns that actually take place during slavery times have bent over backwards to avoid it – as is America’s way. Most other countries have been forced to deal with the atrocities they have committed and the world has made them deal with the atrocities they have committed. It’s kind of everybody’s fault here in America. White, Black – nobody wants to deal with slavery. Nobody wants to stare at it.”

The movie “Django Unchained” will be released in theaters on December 25.