Jamie Foxx Interview

By: R. Burke

Monday November 28, 2005

Jamie Foxx's latest role of "Oo-Rah" Sgt. Siek, takes us into the desert during the Gulf War. Fresh off an Oscar and having a new CD out, what could possibly be next?
You're about the same age as these guys.

Yeah.

Where I would imagine that you had some friends growing up who would like -

Yeah, when we were coming up in high school everybody was at the decision--like in Terrell, Texas, we really didn't have a lot of money. So, the GI bill was just the first thing that you - 'oh, money and we go to school?' Because we all wanted to go to school and we all didn't have any money. So, I took the test to go into the Army and I'll never forget. My recruiter came and I was playing the piano waiting on a choir thing and he said, "uh-uh, don't." He said, "don't come here." I said, "why?" He said, "you ain't going to be able to do that at all." And he actually got me some more information about different colleges to go to, which, you know, spared me in the sense of that I wouldn't be here in front of you guys. A lot of my friends went on and, came back with different looks on their faces, and, you know, just - just different. And then you can see - in the experience in this movie, you could see how it would change you. Even though these guys really didn't get a chance to fire a shot. But I mean imagine, how much they went through and then to come back and try to find a place in society. It's a struggle.

So, did the staff sergeant character feel familiar to you?

Oh, yeah.

It came across on the screen like 'I know about this.'

Listen, I won't say the name of this guy because he wouldn't necessarily tell me. But he was a sort out - a black sergeant in the Marines and he was like - the first thing I asked him, "what about the race thing?" He said, "listen, listen, I'm going to tell you something: Yeah, there's definitely race in it, but you can't let that trip you up." He said, "when I would get these kids in front of me the first thing I do is whisper to the black guy, 'you - you get yourself together because I ain't got time to be swinging low sweet chariot and making sure we look out for the brothers. Don't come with that soul stuff. You get in gear and make sure that you do better than all these other guys because I don't even want them to think that.'" He said because there's not a lot of faces - black faces in this especially on the higher level.

He said, "So, Jamie, you've got to be a whole lot better. You've got to be the person that understands that some of these guys may come from parts of the country where there may not be any black faces and now here's this black face telling them what to do." So he said, "In this situation you have to be able to understand that," and then he went into his thing, and his thing was, he said, "now, how about your march? What's your march looking like?" I said, well, I showed him. "No, no, no," he said, "you've got to add more flare to it, you know, that was the one thing about me. I had a little kink on my marching." He was giving me all the - the fun things of what we would seem to look at as like maybe a dreary job to do. But he was fabulous in giving me that and making staff sergeant psyches different in the sense of - "see, at the level of being a sniper you don't have to bust their balls all the time," he said, because these guys are like coming from college football to NFL players.

And so when you get in the NFL, you don't have to do them like that. He said, "As long as you all perform on Sunday that's the only thing I'm concerned about." He was real instrumental in - in kind of like solidifying the character.

There's a scene you have where you sit down with Jake, the first time we kind of see the guy's humanity being exposed. How important as an actor is it to have that kind of scene? Do you need that?

Yeah, you need it. I think you need it because what happened was when we first sat down to do this movie, we were very Hollywood and we were coming in with our Hollywood way of thinking. Why would they do this and why would they kill that guy and why would they - why do we need war? We had to peel back and find the human side of that guy and why they do it and here's the thing that I've noticed: when I go to Texas to visit my friends, the first thing they ask, "why do you guys talk so much?" They said, "I come out to L.A. and you all just talking and talking and Cappuccino and brunch and all that kinds of way. Why you all do all that?" And then I say, "I don't know, man, it's just, you know, it's..." And he said, "well, I guess that's an L.A. thing," because when you do go home to Texas, it's this sitting on the porch. "Well, what's up?" And it's quiet, nobody is really talking. So we had to show how Sykes is like this. He said, "yeah, okay, I could be complicated. I could be drinking Cappuccino. I could be in L.A. and doing all that." But he said, "but if I were to do that, I wouldn't be able to do this job." He was basically kind of trying to show him that we have to be simple. We have to have one agenda and that's it. We can't worry about race and gender and color and creed. If not, you know, we'll end up dead and we'll end up not achieving our mission. So that point in the script Sam Mendes was real good about - show kind of the human side of this guy.

There's a scene with a live fire exercise going on. The one soldier panics and gets killed. Sikes reaction to that was really interesting. Because you couldn't really mourn for the guy.

You can't mourn because if it were to happen for real, are you going to take time out mourning and then you may get killed also? That was what was amazing to me. We looked at shooting a rifle or gun with blanks in it, and we had headphones and people in safety, and to them, it was like nothing. The way they look at death - I'll never forget one of the guys said, "we would say hello to them." I said, "what does that mean?" He said, "well, what we would do, we would scan the area and when we'd come up and we could see they were the enemy and we would say hello to them." I said, "what is saying hello?" " Well, you know, we're saying hello." Basically he was saying, we're killing them. I said, that's the way you have to be? He said, "that's the way you have to be. It's the way it's going to be. If not, we're not going to get anything done."

I'm not mistaken you shot this movie maybe right before and right after you won?

Yeah, we were doing it during the - during the time - after we won I went back to work that Tuesday. I think it was because on Monday I was recuperating.

How did you stay in focus?

Oh, you've got to stay in focus. That's your job, you know what I'm saying? What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you win the lottery and quit your job and everything like that? I'm the guy that if I won the lottery, I'd go back to work and, you know, make sure I got that straight. We just went back to work and then Sam Mendes won an Oscar. So, it was great. He was giving me all the points, all how I was going to feel and - and all the different things. When we got back to the set it was just a love fest.

But given the nature of camaraderie on the set, I mean, was there a lot of, you know, 'ooh, Mr. Oscar winner is here'?

No, no, not like that, not with those guys because those guys are young and really want to get to that and they were more like, 'how was it, man? How was it on the mountain top?' And you sit down and tell them. I said, "wow, man, you can't believe this. There was Clint Eastwood over here and there was, you know, this person over here..." So it was like it was just amazing to be able to come back and share it with the cast like that.

Your character commands a lot of respect and the actors have said it wasn't hard for them to see you as someone they respect because as an actor they truly respect you. And a lot of that comes from the work, the good work you've done. What does that mean to you?

It's a young - it was almost like a young thing. Nobody really expected Jamie Foxx to win. I mean, you look at Denzel and you expect him to win. When you see Denzel you say, "oh, man, be quiet there's Denzel or there's Halle or there's, you know, you know." With me, I'm that guy that was just telling jokes about O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson on HBO. So it was kind of like, you know, man, like, one of ours, the homey won it in a sense. So that made it, like I said, a little better and a little more interesting.

I'm completely blown away by this concept of original recruiter when you took the test. How that one minute in time completely changed your life and how he influenced really the course of your life. Early on when you were like six or eight years old, who inspired you?

Six or eight?

Yeah.

Wow.

Or even ten. Who inspired you?

I don't know. I think Veronica Williams inspired me when I was six or eight because...

All right, maybe 13, 14. Who made you believe in yourself?

Oh, you know, your - the folks around you, your grandmother, the people in our town. We had a small town, so everybody raised you. It's like we always talk about how, you know, if you got in trouble over at the neighbor's house, you get a whipping over there. When you get home you get a whipping over there because our town was about discipline. I mean, the Furloughs, the Jacksons, the Willies, you know, those are some of the families that were in our city that made sure you were on the right path. I mean, at one point we had this camaraderie about our 1986 class. We felt we were smarter, we felt that we had something else. We was actually proud of our being educated and those types of things. It was a great city to grow up in.

You know, you did such a great job at the Oscars. You had a best moment. Having gone through that process, it's very likely this film will land a group of you guys back at the Oscars. And it will also put the Gulf War at center stage to give actors like yourself an opportunity to discuss something that people have been reluctant to discuss. At this year's Oscars, how do you feel about that and do you think that the Oscars is an appropriate place to discuss politics?

I think whenever you get a chance--Dick Gregory told me this, he said, "when you get a chance to speak to the multitudes, make it count" And that's what you do. I think what's great about this movie coming out at this time, it keeps it in the air. It keeps people talking about it.

With that in mind, what Dick Gregory told you, what did you think of Kanye West's remark?

What about it?

What did you think? Did you think it was a -

First, I just think people went nuts over what he said. I mean, the guy was absolutely frightened out of his mind when he said it. He said it and he's a hero in the black community because somebody needed to say something. When they focused all the attention on Kanye, it's easy to say 'how dare he? This rapper does this and he's that.' But if you listen to his CDs he's always been that way. That was his chance to speak to the multitudes and I think he did a great job. It brought up questions

It's like, that's my friend. Man, it's like, whatever he says I'll stand by him. But, he also made a good point. You look at it like - you look at it like what the presidency used to look to you as a kid when we were coming up, what did the presidency look to you as a kid like? It looked like that job is probably the most heralded job. You probably have to be the smartest. Now, when you look at it, it becomes almost a joke. I've always said that to be president, it's like being a father and the United States is your family. And if my family - if I was president and my family in Des Moines, Iowa, was going through a crisis even though there's no black - a lot of black faces in Des Moines, Iowa, I would still have to go down there and just, you know, check on my family. It's equivalent to this: A friend of mine, he broke his leg playing football and he was crying, crying, crying, crying, crying and his father was just down the street. And when his father got there he looked at his father and he stopped crying. His father wasn't going to fix the broken leg. The leg was still broken, but all he needed to do was look up and see, just show up, and boom. And then I'll never forget, what did they say? They said, well, you know, I think one of the commentators says, well, you know, "how could George Bush go down to New Orleans with the way it was. It was crazy. It was chaos." But he was over in Iraq and I got a feeling a few people over there don't like him.

I saw you making a point about Kanye's song "Jesus Walks", making the movie. Did you by any chance have anything to do with it?

No, no, Sam Mendes, he loved the song. He loves Kanye West and he thought it was appropriate for the movie.

Okay. So he knew Kanye West?

Yeah, yeah.

Is this surreal right now? You have an album coming out. You're in such high demand as an actor. Is this surreal right now when you look at your career?

Oh, man, it's fun. I mean, you know, if it comes organically and if you're not trying too hard it's the best. If you were out there like, singing and had linen on and slow motion and all that kind of stuff and trying to sell it, it would be one thing. But for the actual music to just - to just kind of like - we kind of like let Ray Charles let Ray Charles. I mean, you know, we pick a great sample. We do a great thing. We honor Ray Charles in the film. We went through the music and we - that's what, you know, you're feeling.

Can we get details on your CD?

My CD is called "Unpredictable". We've got to create a guest list for it because we've got Twista, Kanye, Ludacris, Mary J. Blige, The Game, Busted, Snoop. It's an incredible piece.

When will the first single come out?

The first single is out now, "Unpredictable". It's already charted, but we haven't even serviced yet. Somebody leaked it, so now we're scrambling to get the video done. It's crazy.

What producers and writers did you work with?

Oh, man, shit, everybody. Harold Louie, Sean Garrett, Damon Harvey, just a long list of people. It was nuts.

I've heard great, great, great things about it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

It's great. It's real nice and you're going to fall in love. I've got some things on the outskirts to kind of trick them for the young stuff over here, young over here and then that middle, right up in that middle, oooh, get a glass of wine.

I just want to ask you about any connection you have with Miami Vice. Did you used to watch it on TV?

Oh, man, come on, man. I folded my sleeves up on my jacket and take my socks off and my grandmother would have a fit: "Boy, if you don't put your sock - what is going on?" So it's - it's amazing to be standing, you know, in like - in front of history again. This movie is likely to make history. So, it's been - it's been a blast.