Jamie Foxx talks about playing the legendary Ray Charles in Ray
Who would've ever believed that Booty Calling, In Living Color, Jamie Foxx would deliver a performance that could be considered for an Academy Award? Jamie Foxx, with his performance in Ray, truly embodied the late Ray Charles. Foxx is no stranger to music, after all it was his college major. He released a music album in 1994, "Peep This" and sings the theme song for his 1999 movie, "Any Given Sunday". Not many actors get a chance to portray a music legend and do it well. Latino Review was present at the Ray Press Conference in where Foxx gave us insight on his incredible journey that lead him to the iconic role of Ray Charles.
There's a thin line between the talent of mimicry and the craft of acting. How did Jamier Foxx stay on the right side of it in playing the late Ray Charles.
JF: It's called nuance. This whole movie, in order to get to Ray Charles, you had to pray a little bit because everybody knows who Ray Charles is. Young kids, hip-hops kids, I don't say old people, I say seasoned people – everybody knows who Ray Charles is. The first thing I did was I lost 30 pounds. I walk around at 190, so I was 157 pounds with the help of my trainer, Rashon Khan. We had to change my metabolism. He's coming out with a book called Kan-dition. It's incredible how he did that. Eddie Murphy said, 'You're gonna do good because you got that jaw like Ray Charles. You got that Ray jaw.' So that was one of the things that worked in our favor. I said, 'Eddie, I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna run with it.' Then, when I put the shades on, it all kind of came together. And then it was a matter of finding the nuance. Most of the time, with impersonation of Ray, it's 'Oh, God! God!' When we met each other, the things I'd take from him were when he was just sitting there. Right now, we're all on. But when you're not on that's the realness of it. It's how he orders his food, how he talks to his kids, how he gets angry, but he internalizes it. The best Ray Charles thing, in doing this movie, that I liked was when he'd answer the telephone, when they were calling to tell him that the charges were dropped, because he opens his legs and he sits down. That's what I'd call a down home way of answering the phone. That's what you're feeling in the movie. It's the nuisance. Once you get that you're not watching Ray Charles anymore, you're watching a blind man go through some things, a blind man that is blessed with talent, a blind man that is on a journey, and how is he gonna get through that journey. It's like at first you're looking at Ray Charles. But then you look past it, especially when he's going through the drugs. It's like, 'Man, this dude is really going through some things.' So all of the different things we did were the ingredients we needed to really get that character.
How hard was it for Jamie to convince Hollywood that he has the dramatic chops.
JF: You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing. My joke have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great. When I first got on In Living Color I noticed it was not like you thought it was going to be. If you weren't on time, if you got there at 10:01 you have to explain that one minute. And it was a serious situation. Keenan Ivory Wayans was like, 'The reason I'm on you so tough Jamie is because when you're mediocre you're not gonna make it as an African American actor or actress or comedian or singer.' He said, 'You've gotta be top of the line all the time.' I ran into Keenan at the Comedy Awards and he's still echoing the same thing. He said, 'You're doing what I told you to do. Try to stay at the top of your game.' So you never worry (about convincing Hollywood of anything). You've got to blaze, in a sense, your own trail. It's like hip-hop. It's like how hip-hop pulls everything. It's like, man, Fortune 500 companies are calling Puff. 'What do we do? How do we sell this project?' It's basically that mentality that we all have as young cats out there in Hollywood. You're never gonna convince anybody. The only thing you can do is stay true to the art. And I'll drop another name, a white man's name. Lorne Michael, from Saturday Night Live, I was asking him, 'How come people fall off?' He said, 'Jamie, they don't fall if. It's the projects that you choose. If you choose the right projects you don't have to worry about anything as long as you do that.'
Doing a huge role like this what was it that made Jamie Foxx decide he could handle this.
JF: Well, I had done Ray Charles impersonations before. They'd never made it on TV or anything like that. So I knew that I could get into that headspace. But it was still the challenge of 'Can you really make people believe it?' When you look at a biopic, it's really tough to do. When you look at other biopics it's like, 'Wow, that person looks kind of like him, but…' So it's can you go beyond that to where people, when they see it, go, 'Wow, I'm not seeing Jamie Foxx'? I had a little bit of training in doing The Tookie Williams Story (Redemption) in trying to transform into another person. And then I did Bundini Brown (in Ali). I call it under and over. Bundini Brown was underbite. Just that alone gives you Bundini. So there were all these different things that you would do to try to see if could take what you feel on the inside and have people trip out on it, if that makes any sense.
According to Diretor Taylor Hackford, Ray Charles was tough on Jamie Foxx before he gave his blessing to you playing him.
JF: First, I met Ray and he said, 'Oh, let me check these fingers out. Let me check out these fingers. You got strong fingers, oh yeah.' So we sat down at dual pianos. He was playing one piano and I was playing the other, and we were singing the blues. He said, 'If you can the blues, Jamie, you can do anything.' He's singing, 'All, right-right,' and we're singing the blues back and forth. Then he said, 'Well, how about this?' And he goes into Thelonious Monk. It's like the equivalent to riding a mechanical bull when you've had too many drinks. Then you just fly all the way out to the bar. And then I hit a wrong note and he said, 'Now why the hell did you do that?' He was very serious about it. He wasn't laughing. I said, 'Well, I don't know.' He said, 'You didn't know what?' I said, 'Well…' And he said, 'Notes are right underneath your fingers.' I started listening to him as he was speaking and he was very serious. His music is his harmony. If it's off his whole life is off. He said, 'The notes are right underneath your fingers, Jamie. You've just got to take time out to find them, young man.' So I used that as a metaphor through the whole movie, that our life is notes underneath our fingers, and we've just got to figure out which notes we want to play to make our music. So that's what we started doing right there. I said, 'OK, I'm gonna play the right Ray Charles notes and then I'm gonna play this Ray Charles story.'
And did Jamie get the notes right when he played along with Ray.
JF: It was after I got the Thelonious Monk riff that he said, 'There it is! That's what I'm talking about. Now come on.' When I finally got it he jumped up and he slapped his thighs and he said, 'The kid's got it.' And he walked out. That's when I knew we had it.
In the film Ray's mother was a huge factor in his life. Jamie's grandmother was a huge factor his life, there is a part of the traditional southern upbringing, in which Jamie totally agrees.
JF: Of course. Anybody who was brought up in the south, you were brought up in the real world. When I come to New York I can't believe how many buildings there are, how much concrete, how much steel, how many people. I'm like, 'My goodness!' When I'm in L.A., it's too nice. It's sunshine. It's palm trees. Everybody's happy. In the south, even right now, when we're dealing with the political situation, there's a real dose of how people really feel. For the longest time, (racism) had been in certain people for so long that's just how it was. Ray Charles was the first one to stick his hand out and try to stop that domino, that racial domino, that ignorant domino, that 'I'm better than you' domino. And that's what I tried to do when I was coming up. If you think about it, the way Ray put things in perspective, he said, 'Oh, whites only bathroom, coloreds only bathroom. I can't see that. I just need to use the bathroom.' Bill Cosby told a story the other night where Ray Charles was playing the Playboy Jazz Fest and the whole orchestra was white. And Cosby walks up and says (in Cosby voice), 'Do you know that the whole orchestra is white?' Ray says, 'Funny, they don't sound white.' So, I would say that I (also) wanted to bridge that gap that was boundary of the railroad track. In my city the railroad track separates the black side from the white side. The only time I saw white people was when someone was going to jail or an insurance (man came by). That's how you learned your acting skills. That was my acting class. When that insurance man came to the door my mother said, 'Go tell him I ain't here.' I'd say, 'Well, I told him that last month.' And she'd say, 'Well, you'd better make something up.' So I'd say, 'My mother…' And that was my first acting job. 'Granny says she ain't here.' So (Ray Charles and I have) all these different similarities in that southern upbringing, that southern way of talking to women. I consider myself a southern gentleman. (I have) that certain way of being country-dumb. When I'm in L.A., yeah, I do all the L.A. things. I know it's the west coast. I said, 'Oh man, I love it,' but I know on the inside I've got something else working, too. So there were a lot of different similarities with Ray.
Jamier Foxx becomes Ray in the film, that you totally forget that it is Foxx playing the role. As you know a lot of actors remains in character when the camera stops rolling, but Foxx is not one of those actors.
JF: No, no. CCH Pounder taught me one thing. She said, "Characters are like putting on a coat. You put the coat on while you work, you take the coat off after it's over.' You need that freshness. I know people who stay in character, and it's the worst thing in the world. You can't go out. They're still in their character and the character residue is too much. I like to go do it, flip it on like a light switch and then flip it off. Then, when we come back in the next morning I flip it back on. And that's what keeps things fresh for me.
Foxx's work in is by no means an Oscar-caliber one and and much of his future work will probably be judged against what he has done in this film, and he's not nervous at all.
JF: Oh yeah. That's what I'm telling everybody. This is the Cinderella time right now. Everybody's saying, 'Oh, we love ya.' But it's like flying out of Los Angeles. When you fly out of Los Angeles it's pretty and everything is nice and then the pilot comes on and says, 'We're having a little weather over…' So we're coming up to weather, I'm sure, as far as the different projects we'll choose. But to be honest with you I've got a couple of decent projects that, for now, I can sit back and say, 'This are going to be, still, some great things.' So it's great right now. It does make you a little, not nervous, you never get nervous, but I go back to my man and ask that question and go back to what Keenan said. 'You just gotta make sure it's top dog.'
Alot of buzz is going on that Jamie will get nominated for an Oscar, and if he wins he will thank everybody.
JF: Hey man, I'm gonna thank my grandmother. Boy, that would be crazy. I don't know what I would do. I'd thank everybody, Ray Charles, everybody.
Now that Jamie's done Ray, what about a movie about Jamie himself, can he see anyone playing him in the Jamie Foxx Story.
JF: He's not born yet (spoken in an old man's voice). Hopefully, I've got a little living to do.
In the film Foxx chose to be blinded to play Ray so that it can be kept true.
JF: Ray couldn't cheat. So there were certain things when I did play it blind that you couldn't get around. I couldn't get up and move. I couldn't look up and see what was going on. We had to stay singularly focused in order to keep it true.
Jamie is not the only actor that has moved from comedy to drama, Jim Carrey did it, so did Robin Williams, but Jamie assures that comedy is very important to him.
JF: Hey man, I have to let them know every day, 'Don't sleep on me.' All those comics out there that think I've gotten soft and I'm doing the dramatic stuff, I had to go to the comedy awards and let them know I still got that comedy sword. We were at the ESPYs not too long ago and I had Cedric the Entertainer, and I had to keep the heat up on him. So it's a fair competition between all the comedians right now. We really have a great community right now. We just honored the whole Wayans family for what they've contributed and all the comedy they've given us. It's a great time right now for comedians, because we are stepping into other roles and doing other things, but we're still keeping our comedy side fresh. I ran into Chris Tucker at the Ray Charles tribute a couple of nights ago. He's coming down to Laughapalooza. That's where I'm getting like 60 comedians and we're gonna go all night, every five minutes another comedian.
Dont't forget to also check out: Ray