WESLEY SNIPES
He’s the OG Blade who made his name as an action star in the ’90s, before his career was temporarily paused by a prison sentence and some questionable film choices. But as his comedy comeback continues in long-awaited sequel Coming 2 America, Wesley Snipe
I DIDN’T WANT TO BE TYPECAST AS BLADE
Wesley Snipes’ voice is quite something. Not only does the 58-year-old actor speak theatrically in a smooth, resonant timbre, he also drops several spot-on impersonations during our chat, and frequently explodes in uproarious laughter. He’s sage-like when talking about his talent, health and wellbeing. “My spirit is good,” he beams at the top of our Zoom chat in February. “I’m divinely inspired and spiritually motivated.”
It’s no surprise to find him in fine fettle. His latest role, General Izzi in Coming 2 America, sees him stealing the film amid a wealth of comedy talents. Reteaming with director Craig Brewer and Eddie Murphy – following Dolemite Is My Name, the 2019 film that also showcased his comedy chops – Snipes seems comfortably out of his comfort zone.
For many cinemagoers, he’s best known as an action icon, following a rapid-fire string of ’90s genre hits: Passenger 57, Demolition Man, U.S. Marshals et al. But his filmography tells a more varied story, with Spike Lee collaborations (Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever), comedies (White Men Can’t Jump, To Wong Foo…) and dramas like Mike Figgis’ One Night Stand, for which he won the Venice Film Festival’s Best Actor Volpi Cup.
To a certain generation, though, he’ll be inextricably fused to Blade, Marvel’s badass human-vampire hybrid (Snipes’ Zoom handle is ‘OG Daywalker’). The plasmadrenched first instalment 1998 preempted the box-office potential of the new wave of Marvel comic-book movies. Snipes brought gravel-toned charisma and physical gravitas to the role over two more films: Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II, and the inauspicious Blade: Trinity.
Blade made him a cinematic immortal, and affection for those early roles helped him weather an extended run of direct-tovideo films, and a prison ruling. In 2008, he was sentenced to three years in prison for failure to file $15m worth of federal tax returns. After losing his appeal, he was jailed in December 2010, serving two-anda-half years.
If the big-ticket roles have been fewer since, reliable collaborators have provided notable highlights: he’s reteamed with Lee (Chi-Raq) and Stallone (The Expendables 3), plus there’s those Murphy comedies. When TF asks if it meant a lot to have people like Murphy opening the door to him after his conviction, it’s the only time during the interview when he’s less than jovial. “He didn’t throw me a life vest,” he bristles. “I’ve been very, very active.”
Branching out with his ‘Daywalker Klique’ collective and authoring a book, Talon Of God, Snipes has been busy, but these recent roles have certainly boosted his movie profile again, and next up is a dramatic Netflix series with Kevin Hart. Not bad for someone who started out as a street dancer in the ’70s. “Basically, to win the affection of the few females in the neighbourhood, you had to have some swag,” he recalls. “So street dancing was where it’s at… All of that took me to a performing arts high school, and there they introduced us to the real art form of drama and dramatic acting. And that’s where it all started. From breakdancing to General Izzi.” He bursts into that laugh again. “A natural progression, I would say.”
Did Coming 2 America come about directly from working with Eddie Murphy and Craig Brewer on
Dolemite Is My Name? Yes. It came from us working on Dolemite. After the film, Eddie’s people made a slight hint that Coming To America 2 was coming up, and later on the director, Craig, pulled me aside and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea here. I want you to come and do something in Coming To America 2.” And I said yes before he could finish.
Did you guys hit it off immediately?
We hit it off very well. I appreciated their sense of artistry and professionalism, and a sense of rhythm and groove. Craig has a great sense of timing and groove. He also has a strong musical background, which is something I can relate to. Sometimes I try to approach my acting as if we were creating music – the way we speak; the intonations; the pace and pause of the dialogue. I try to make it sound musical and rhythmic. Plus, you must be doing something right if the great Eddie Murphy will rock with you on a second film almost back to back, you know? [laughs]
What was your relationship with the original film?
Oh, man, it was a huge film for me. Very, very important. I had actually auditioned for the original film, and didn’t get the role. I auditioned for the role of the boyfriend with the Soul Glo, with Jheri-curl hair. I was disappointed I didn’t get the role at that time, and promised myself that one of these days, I’m going to get a chance to work with Eddie Murphy. It didn’t work out, though! [laughs] So 30 years later, it came around, and here we are. We get to rock again, and I get to have a lot more fun than I would have had in the first one.
Have you been enjoying this opportunity to lean into comedy?
It’s the way the world turns. It’s the vicissitudes of life, actually. I actually started out doing comedy, in the theatre days. And I ended up doing the drama work, and that took me to action. And I did a whole bunch of action. But I’ve always had an affection for comedy, and an
appreciation for the talent I was working with on Dolemite and Coming 2 America. I feel very comfortable there. It’s fantastic. So we’ll see. I like to flip it around. I’ll do a little comedy, a little drama, and then some chopsocky, and then do some crying and romance or something.
Was Eddie a friend before Dolemite?
No, man. I hated Eddie Murphy, man. If I ever saw Eddie Murphy around, I’d tell Eddie Murphy to his face: “I hate you, Eddie Murphy!” [laughs] We were good friends, man. Eddie was very kind to me. From, I would say, the mid-’90s, we’ve known each other and socialised. But it wasn’t until Dolemite that we got a chance to work together. The stars aligned.
D’Urville Martin – who you play in
Dolemite – is a director as well as an actor. Have you considered directing?
Yes. I’ve directed quite a bit, both in film and a lot more in theatre. Even street performances and puppet shows. So I have the directing skills. But I think for film, I’m going to stay away from that right now. The actors I’ve seen that are directors on films, especially the action ones, they usually have breakups in their marriage during the production. And that’s not a good commercial for being a director. Nah. I’ll produce, but I’m not going to direct.
Do you remember when you first got the acting bug and saw it as career?
Oh, yeah. When I was 15, I went to the High School of Performing Arts, the Fame school in midtown Broadway, New York City. When I went there and auditioned and saw all of the dancers – the female dancers who were auditioning too – I knew that this was absolutely the career for me. This was definitely the direction I needed to go in. And I’ve never looked back since [laughs]. Thank you, dancers! I’d like to give my thanks to Stanislavski… but it’s the dancers in the leotards who really motivated me.
Did you ever feel like you had a gameplan when you started out, or were you just going with the flow?
Quite a bit of it was what was available, and what was offered at the time. I was really a dramatic, theatrical-focused actor. I thought I would be dancing and singing and doing dramatic stuff on stage. It just so happens that those opportunities didn’t come around in the early days of my career. The closest I got to it was working with Michael Jackson on the ‘Bad’ video. That was a little weekend job. [laughs]
What are your memories from that?
Fabulous. I was just looking at a picture of me sitting next to Michael Jackson and Martin Scorsese looking at the monitor during the production. I was sitting there next to him, to learn from both of them. If they coughed, I wanted to inhale it. If they said anything, I wanted to hear it. If they wanted coffee or a drink, I wanted to be the first to go get it. Because I wanted to have what they have rub off on me – that special thing. I never forgot them. Michael and I were friends from that day until the day he decided to leave the Earth.
Spike Lee is another great, and you’ve worked with him a few times over the years. Do you have a favourite from your collaborations together?
I DIDN’T HAVE A SENSE OF THE IMPACT THOSE FILMS WERE HAVING
Grandmaster Spike. Mr. Lee. Everything I’ve done with Spike, I enjoyed very much. I would say the favourites are the relationships and activities on-screen and, in particular, Mo’ Better Blues. I had a great, great time on that film. But our off-screen friendship is just as vibrant and fun and entertaining. [laughs] All the stuff I’ve done with him, I’ve enjoyed greatly. He actually asked me to do an action movie one time, and I started laughing. I was like, “Spike, you don’t do action, brother. [laughs] No, no, no, no. I’m not doing action with you.” That’s how cool we are. We can laugh about those things.
Looking back, what do you see as your turning-point roles?
‘Bad’ was an instrumental point. There was a wonderful film we did, very early on, called The Waterdance, where I play a paraplegic. Neal Jiminez wrote that piece. It’s loosely based on his personal life experience. That was a great opportunity for me. It showed the range of my deep, dramatic skills. It also introduced me to Hollywood as a dramatic actor. Not as an action actor, and not as a martial artist. So those early offers were all dramabased. And then Passenger 57 came, and opened up the doors to action. Then boom, boom, boom.
It went from there.
Did you feel totally unstoppable during that run of hits in the ’90s?
No. Actually, I didn’t have that perspective. I’m grateful to be working, and constantly looking to improve my craft. I didn’t have a sense of the impact that those films, nor my work in those films, was having in the market or globally. I didn’t grow up around people who are in the film industry, and who knew the highs and lows, and how to recognise if something was life-changing. So I approached it as actors do. This is one character. OK, I’ve done that. Now let me move on to the next character. Have I improved my skillset? Have I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish in this role? Where am I weak in my skills? Maybe I should do something next to improve, or to address my weaknesses?
I didn’t know. I had a crazy experience once when I was in Romania, and a brother came up to me in a club. I was actually in a place where I thought about leaving the business. I thought, “OK, it’s better for me to just pursue it in theatre and stuff like that. I’ll be happier as an artist.”
I was going to retire from film. I told him this, in the club. And he told me, “No. You can’t do that, because you don’t know what the impact that you and Laurence Fishburne have had on Black men like me in London, who are often looked at as invisible. When you guys came up, I was no longer invisible.” Boom! It hit me in the heart with that point. And then I was mad, because I felt like Pacino. “Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!” [laughs] So I stuck with it.
When was that?
That was when we were making a lot of money, and bad movies. Or put it this way, we were making a lot of money in movies that weren’t very good. And then I discovered that there was a whole other business where all they needed was the actor in the movie. They pay the actor $10 million, but the movie might cost $4 million. And then they’d sell it. They would make $30 million, $40 million, $50 million off it. I didn’t understand this. I was like, “The movie should be good, right? You’re going to pay the actor more than what you put into production? OK, this makes no sense to me.” I made a couple of them, and they weren’t very good. We got paid very well, but they weren’t very good. [laughs] I didn’t like that, man! I didn’t like it. I want to be associated with quality work. Legacy work.
Is making an action movie as fun as it looks?
If you like action movies, it is fun. If you don’t like action movies, it is hell – it is not fun at all. Action movies are so underrated. I’m a champion for action actors. I love all of the action actors that have ever existed, going back to the wonderful ones like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Clara Bow. Actresses and actors who had body movement that could do quadruple threats: could sing, dance, tap, act. There’s not many of them around now, and most of them who survived the action genre don’t get the recognition and the credit for being skill-masters at an art form that is extremely challenging and life-threatening on a daily basis. [laughs] It is acting. It is the highest level of acting.
Blade was another big role. Did you always have an interest in comic-books before then? You had been looking at Black Panther before that.
I THINK I COULD DO A FANTASTIC JAMES BROWN ONE OF THESE DAYS