Ice Cube struck gold in 1995 with his Hollywood hit Friday that starred comedian Chris Tucker, as the two went throughout their tumultuous day getting high off marijuana and escaping the drama of the streets. While several continuations of the franchise have been successful, with Mike Epps stepping into the co-starring role, fans for years have been asking for the return of Tucker’s cannabis-loving character Smokey.
Tucker has teased several times that he may return but it never materialized. He recently conducted an online interview and explained that he didn’t want to be a vessel for people taking steps onto the high side, so he fell back.
“Back then, I got to tell you, one of the reasons why I didn’t do the second one is because of the weed. Because I said, ‘Man, that movie became a phenomenon. I don’t want everybody smoking’ weed.’ I never really told people this because I kind of forgot about it but it was one of the reasons why I didn’t do it. Because I said, ‘I don’t want to represent everyone smoking weed.’ I kind of made it more personal than a movie and that’s one of the reasons I said, ‘Nah, I don’t want to keep doing that character,'” he stated during the interview.
Tucker, like many of the stars in the first film, has stated that the movie didn’t cost a lot to be produced and turned out to be sleeper hit for New Line Cinema.
“It’s one of those things — it was just a small movie. We filmed it in 20 days. I got about $10,000 for it or whatever, I didn’t care. I wanted the opportunity. It was that small of a movie, but that was the beauty of it. It allowed me to get into character. It wasn’t no big distractions like big movie sets. You got light people and sound people and everybody want to be a star. But that movie was just a camera and me and Cube on the porch. Magic came out of it, thank God,” he added.
Check out the interview below as Chris Tucker goes back down memory line and discusses his break-out role.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWiOaYdkbk8[/embedyt]
