‘COMPTON’: YOUNG CAST TAKES A SURREAL TRIP BACK
Original N.W.A members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube guide a new generation through their story
Walking onto the set of Straight Outta Compton was just like going back in.
When the music biopic shot in Los Angeles last year, fans of hiphop group N.W.A often would gather to watch. One day, “I looked right, and this guy was literally under the bill of my hat with me,” says Jason Mitchell, who portrays the late Eazy-E. “He’s like, ‘Bro. It’s like you’re a ghost, bro.’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’ ... This wasn’t just some guy they knew. This was a piece of history that put Compton on the map.”
“It was surreal, in so many ways,” says rapper/actor Ice Cube, who produces and is played by his real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.
“It was like being right back there in the hood. It just took me back to ’83, ’84, ’85.”
Compton, out Friday, tracks the rise and fall of N.W.A in the ’ 80s and ’90s — from the recording of their seminal 1988 debut album of the same name to the group’s split three years later to Eazy’s death in 1995 from AIDS-related complications.
The cast is led by newcomers including Corey Hawkins (as Dr. Dre), Neil Brown Jr. (DJ Yella) and Aldis Hodge (MC Ren), all of whom went to great lengths to get under the skins of their characters. (Paul Giamatti co-stars as N.W.A’s crooked manager, Jerry Heller.)
Hawkins, 26, and Mitchell, 28, had to bulk up to play Dre and Eazy, which required a 4,000-calorie-a-day diet, as well as boxing and fight training months before the shoot. Jackson, meanwhile, lost 15 pounds to more closely resemble his then-teenage father, which he achieved through cross training and a regimen of “dirt, grass and water,” he jokes. They also pored through old tapes of N.W.A working and performing together, and talked to their reallife counterparts (Mitchell, with Eazy’s family and friends; Jackson and Hawkins, with Cube and Dre, also a producer).
Dre was “there every step of the way,” Hawkins says. “If I needed to pick up the phone and call him at 4 in the morning while we’re still on set for a little moment, he would be available for that. At the beginning of the process, he said: ‘I’m not interested in you imitating me or trying to mimic me or anything like that. Just capture the essence of what we represented.’ ”
The most grueling challenge for the young cast may have been rerecording N.W.A’s album Straight Outta Compton in its entirety, which includes gangsta rap classics such as Express Yourself, F--- Tha Police and the title track. Spending weeks in the studio, working with vocal coaches and receiving feedback from Cube and Dre, the five actors went on a musical crash course, particularly Hawkins. Not only did he have to learn to rap, but also produce and DJ using vinyl records as Dre once did.
“Literally, if I was in the booth and didn’t do something right, someone would push the button and be like, ‘Nope, that ain’t it,’ ” Hawkins says. “It really felt like we became the group in the process.”
It also made them fast friends, with a wisecracking, effortless chemistry that was evident over dinner with the cast in New York last week.
“They were operating off this organic connection with each other, rather than just acting,” says director F. Gary Gray ( The Italian Job). “They found a love for each other.”
“If I was in the booth and didn’t do something right, someone would ... be like, ‘Nope, that ain’t it.’ It really felt like we became the group in the process.”
Corey Hawkins, who plays Dr. Dre