TONIGHT
E-mail a friendJamie Foxx
airdate October 27, 2004
Jamie Foxx is one of only five performers to have both a Billboard #1 single and an acting Oscar and one of few actors to win the quadruple film awards crown (Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Academy Award) in the same season. He can also boast having a multi-platinum-selling CD, 'Unpredictable,' and multiple Grammy nods.
Jamie Foxx
Tavis: I am delighted, delighted, delighted to welcome back to this program Jamie Foxx. The talented comedian and actor is poised for what many are calling the role of a lifetime as he plays Ray Charles in the new film 'Ray.' The movie opens this Friday night. Of course, you know that by now, 'cause you've seen Jamie everywhere. But he's here with us tonight. Here now a scene from 'Ray.'
Ray:
Bea: Ray.
Ray: She's good to me, oh, yeah
Bea: Ray.
Ray: She give me money...
Bea: Ray! That's sacrilegious.
Ray: It's what?
Bea: I-it's a gospel song.
Ray: I know what it is. I wrote it. I mean, you told me to find my own voice. Well, Bea, this is it.
Bea: But, it--it--it ain't right to be changin' gospel music into this.
Ray: Into what? In-into devil music? Evil music? You think I'm evil, Bea? Lookit, I--I been performin' gospel and blues all my life. It's who I am.
Jamie Foxx: Whooooo! He's smiling.
Tavis: Thank you.
Jamie: People are really tryin' to figure out, is that me or is that Ray?
Tavis: That's--that's a good question.
Jamie: That's a good question. I'll let you hold onto that.
Tavis: You look--it looks so much ...
Jamie: That's collectible.
Tavis: I like the glasses, the little--I don't know if the camera can see that. Got the little bling-bling jumpin' off. Yeah.
Jamie: Kind of a bling-bling, bringin' Ray Charles and hip-hop culture and everything together.
Tavis: Thank you, Jamie Foxx. I appreciate that. The, um--in that clip...
Jamie: Mm-hmm. You are talking to your wife there about finding your own voice--in the character. Ray is talking to his wife about his own voice. Let me ask you whether or not you have found your voice, 'cause you're on a roll, man.
Jamie: Yeah, I'm--the thing is that, you know me. You've watched me as a young cat, and I've watched you as a young cat coming up, and it's all the things you want to do. When I watch you, I see a depth of things that you want to do, how you want to go with your career and your life. It's the same when you see me. It's like there are certain things that we could get to those certain points in our life, we can really make a difference. We can really put an impact on our career. So that's where we are right now. Just, you know, I'm rockin' 'n' rollin'.
Tavis: I want to ask you how you got there. Before I do that, I want to play a clip from one of your friends. Not long ago on this program, your friends Tom Cruise and Jada Pinkett Smith were on the program. I asked them both the question. Here's a clip, I think of Jada, answering a question I posed to her of what is it about Jamie at this point in his life. They were here talking about the movie 'Collateral.'
Jamie: Right, right, right.
Tavis: I asked them what is it about Jamie from your perspective that's got this cat in the zone right about now. Here's what Jada had to say. Take a look.
Jada Pinkett Smith: I could tell how talented, you know, Jamie Foxx is, you know. And it's just about the artist becoming focused in order to really dive in oneself and be able to pull out all those jewels and gems, you know, within the creative box that we have. And Jamie just decided to do that.
Jamie: Will called me.
Tavis: Yeah?
Jamie: I tell you that?
Tavis: No, Will.
Jamie: Will, her husband, called me. And it was a conversation-- When she's talking about focused, it was really--I was in a club, kickin' it. This was like a few weeks before we started Ray Charles, and I'm just partyin' and one of Will's boys saw me and called Will, and I'm on my way to have something, I get a phone call.
'This is Will.' 'Will who?' 'Will Smith. Yo, what are you doin'?' He said, 'You're about to blow it.' I said, 'I'm about to blow what?' He said, 'If you don't get home and really submerge yourself into this character and really take your time and really do the right thing with it, you're gonna blow it. Here's an opportunity of a lifetime.'
Because at first 'Ray Charles' was starting out as an independent film, and we were like, you know, 'Is it gonna happen? Is it not gonna happen?' He said, 'Regardless of that--' And he talked to me about half an hour. He said, 'Get down, get into it, and really make it something special, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.'
He said he always had that mentality of working hard because he said his whole life changed, and he asked me, 'When did my life change?' And I said, 'It changed in ‘Bad Boys,' when you was runnin' in that one scene.' He said, 'If I had sloughed off on that one scene, maybe that wouldn't have happened.'
He said, 'Do not--if I hear about you in the club, if I hear about you not bein' serious about it, I'm gonna come to ya.' And so it's people like that that you take for granted. You know, you would think that Will, with all his money; Jada, with all her money; Tom Cruise, and all that, that they would say, 'OK, whatever, I have my life.' But he really was concerned about the art, and that's what you need. When you get to certain levels in the business and you need somebody that's been there to tell you, 'Hey, this is what you need to do.'
Tavis: OK, so if the moment for Will is runnin' like this in 'Bad Boys'...
Jamie: Yeah.
Tavis: You had to get that--you had to find that moment before 'Ray' because it's what got you to 'Ray.'
Jamie: Yes.
Tavis: So what's that moment for you when you really got serious and got focused? Even though you hangin' out at the club that night when Will called you.
Jamie: Yeah, well, you know, I...still...do that every once in a while.
Tavis: Yeah, I know you do. Gotta get your groove on now and then.
Jamie: But the moments came for me. 'In Living Color' was a moment. The Wanda character was a moment. It was like a rookie running a punt back on a football team. Moments: 'Any Given Sunday.' Being able to work with directors that were artists as opposed to directors that just wanted to drive the shiny car, live up in the hills, and say, 'I'm a director.' So Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Taylor Hackford. Antoine Fuqua, even. Although 'Bait' was not what we thought it would be, Antoine Fuqua still taught me about, you know, acting. You know, so those were the moments that I've had, and now I believe in the 'Ray' movie, all those moments come together.
Tavis: Well, you know you all that when you are on the cover of Essence and Ebony at--Look at this.
Jamie: Unh!
Tavis: At the same time!
Jamie: Somebody got some checks!
Tavis: That ain't even right!
Jamie: Pay 'em off, pay 'em off, I say.
Tavis: You on Ebony and Essence at the same time!
Jamie: That's crazy, that's crazy, that's crazy. But, you know, it's like I was explaining, like, to my publicist Alan. I said, 'You know, I've never had that,' and so I don't even--sometimes I recognize it and I appreciate everything, but I keep my head down because I just saw somebody on Jet.
Tavis: Mm-hmm. Well...
Jamie: Look out, man, that's--aah!
Tavis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jamie: But I remember Jet beauty. Remember Jet beauty? I turned right to page 36.
Tavis: I still look at it.
Jamie: They had a full panties on, too. Wasn't no g-string. Had a full panties--man, that's sacrilegious. She got hot sauce.
Tavis: As a matter of fact, before I read my article, I went to the Jet beauty of the week, then came back and read my story.
Jamie: Man, that got me through high school.
Tavis: The Jet thing is nice, but you really have arrived, and I raise that on a serious note because I wonder whether or not at all--I know you'll be honest with me here. I wonder at all whether or not you are scared. And I say scared, I mean, you--you been on top before when 'In Living Color' was--
Jamie: Yeah. But, see, if anybody knows anything about 'In Living Color,' 'In Living Color' was L.A. sizzle. If you can have L.A. sizzle and still maintain your sanity, then you're great. So with the 'Ray Charles,' it's I've had a little bit of that, uh, bein' prepared for this. But what I've learned is, I get to Italy, and in Italy, I get a phone call. 'Yo, it's D. Get down to the lobby.' 'Who?' 'It's Denzel.' At the film festival, so when Den says--
Tavis: When Denzel calls...
Both: You go to the lobby.
Jamie: I'm like this. I get down there, and he says, 'Yeah, yeah. I been hearin' some things, you know. Uh, I won't put nothin' on you, but I been hearin', uh, you know, some good things about Ray, what have you. And how you feelin'?' I said, 'I'm good.' He gave me advice. He said, 'Don't look at all of this stuff out here. All this stuff is gonna take care of itself.' He said, 'Remain on the art trail. Getting the great projects, getting the good project that you can flex your acting muscle.'
And I'm listening, and as I'm saying that and listening to him, I hear, 'Jamie Foxx! Come here, you.' And it's Al Pacino, giving the same advice of don't worry about all the different things that's goin' on. The covers, all of that kinda stuff really becomes small when you're looking for the next project. And go a step further, about how not to be scared. Lorne Michaels said--I was asking him, 'How--Why do people fall off?' He said, 'People don't fall off. It's the projects that they choose. If you choose bad projects, eventually you will burn out, so keep looking that way. Don't worry about the other stuff.'
Tavis: That's a fascinating setup. Thank you, Mr. Foxx. I'm trying to figure out how you follow up, as I intimated earlier, perhaps the role of a lifetime.
Jamie: Oh, you keep--
Tavis: Speaking of picking projects.
Jamie: Well, you keep livin', and I think that once, see, it's the thing that you keep under your sleeve or up your sleeve, 'cause we have projects that may not be the Ray Charles project, but it's gonna be different and great and creative in another area. Even with the comedy, we're gonna choose, you know, uh, pieces that are smart and new and try to get 'em innovative. But the pieces that we have lined up can, maybe not compare to 'Ray Charles,' but at least, you go, 'Oh, my goodness, another pleasant find, another discovery.' So that's what we keep doing, we keep tryin'.
Tavis: All right, so how you handlin' this? And I said I wasn't gonna ask you about this.
Jamie: Ask me.
Tavis: I said I wasn't gonna ask you. You been asked--you been 'aks'd' this question so many times. So let me 'aks' you anyway. How you handling all this Oscar buzz?
Jamie: You know what, we welcome it. You know why I welcome it? Because it's more than just me involved. It's a beautiful testimony to Ray Charles' story. For the person that didn't want to go see the Ray Charles story because 'I don't know, is it? What? What?' If they hear that, then maybe they'll go see it.
15 years Ray Charles and Taylor Hackford tried to put this movie together. Ray Charles got a chance to view it before he passed, so for them and for everybody that's involved with this--Phil Anschutz, $35, 40 million, and Taylor Hackford makes it look like an $80 million film. Universal, when nobody stepped up to the plate, Ron Meyer said, 'hey, I used to watch Ray when I was 15 years old. I used to sneak into the Palladium. I'm-a buy that movie without seein' a frame.'
So all of those different entities that go on with that, you want that type of buzz. 2--it puts me in a certain category--with those people in Italy--to be able to get that advice, to be able to talk to Tom Hanks, to be able to talk to Denzel, to get the true artists' voice, to hear Tom Cruise talk about, 'Man, it's just about making the movie.'
So when you add it all up, it's all good, and not to run from it. If you run--I'm an enthusiastic person, you know? I'm sayin', 'If I were to be there, it's gonna be a different night.' You know, it's gonna be that, uh, that childlike enthusiasm, so that's a great thing. And if it doesn't happen, you just keep walkin' in the same direction.
Tavis: OK, so if it does happen that you get--
Jamie: I'm gonna have Fat Joe, I'm gonna have Little John come out, and we gonna sing,
Dunh-dunh dunh-dunh,
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-doh,
Fssst! Da-da-dunh.
Tavis: Yeah.
Jamie: That would catch those dancers...
Do the Oscar way,
Lean back, Oscar,
Lean back, Oscar,
Lean back, Oscar...
Tavis: That would turn out the Oscar Awards.
Jamie: Man, they'll never, ever have me again.
Tavis: I'm not sure they ready for Chris Rock. They definitely wouldn't be ready for Chris Rock and you on the stage at the same time.
Jamie: But you know what? It's like there's a way to be enthusiastic about it, and then there's a way of, you know, going about it where you don't disrespect the process of it. And that's the main thing we want to do. We didn't wanna change Jamie Foxx; we don't wanna disrespect the process of the campaigns, of getting the awareness to the movie, and the right awareness. So, you know, we know how to--right now we got a great--we're havin' a great time.
Tavis: I wanna help you out here. What I hate to see are folk who get on stage, with all due respect to Cuba Gooding, and ain't got nothin' to say when they get up. They just jumpin' up and down, happy 'cause they--
Jamie: I'm gonna thank Tavis Smiley.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad. I--that's what I wanted to say, first of all.
Jamie: Tavis, man, we did it!
Tavis:
Jamie: I'd thank my grandmother.
Tavis: Your grandmother.
Jamie: Grandmother, you know, 95 years old, and my grandfather. I would thank my sister who really, really knows me, like beyond all of my family, all of my friends, the one lady that still calls me Eric Bishop. She does not call me--'I ain't callin' you no Jamie.' The person that I know that I can look in her eyes and she can look back in my eyes and say, 'Are we cool?' If it ain't cool, she gonna say, 'No, it's not cool.' If it is cool, we gonna keep rollin'. So I'll start out right there, and then there's a long list of people that I will try to get in before they start playin' the music.
Tavis: Now, if you win and you don't thank me, I'm comin' after you.
Jamie: I'm tellin' you, man.
Tavis: I'm comin' after you, man.
Jamie: I'm gonna have a Tavis Smiley t-shirt on.
Tavis:
Jamie: No, no, no.
Tavis: I mean, it was absolutely phenomenal. When you look at it now, do you scare yourself at how good you had Ray down?
Jamie: No, it's not necessarily that. If you think like I think, if you think spiritually--I'm not puttin' any denomination on it--but if you think spiritually, Ray Charles put his spirit on it. And when he left, he left all of his energy and all that he--it was like there was the movie, and then when he left, he left a little energy. So when we play the movie, it's touching you in so many different ways. For one, I'm not the lead actor in the film, I'm the supporting actor. Ray Charles is the lead actor. He lived such a compelling and complex life and such a great life that all we had to do was touch the bases, get it in the right, you know, area. Now, as far as the character was concerned, that's when the work came in. I walk around at 190 pounds. I was 157 pounds.
Tavis: You lost like, 30 or 40 pounds to get ready for this.
Jamie: Yeah, because it was--nobody was lifting weights in the forties and the fifties. You know, they were smaller. So I had to--
Tavis: Stop right quick. How you lose 40 pounds? You stop eatin'?
Jamie: Oh, no, no, no. My trainer, Rashawn Khan.
Tavis: OK, Rashawn.
Jamie: And we're comin' out with books and everything to teach people not--you don't wanna go as drastic as I did, but we did get to it. And then I took the prosthetics and became blind. I was blind 12 to 14 hours a day, uh, you know, for the majority of it, for the first month. So I couldn't cheat and, uh--
Tavis: Stop again. On a personal level, what did you learn from the experience of being blind 12, 14 hours a day.
Jamie: Well, for one, you take for granted, you know. Say if I'm walking and I see sunlight, I interpret sunlight is coming. When you're blind, sunlight strokes you. The music is more intense. But then I hyperventilated a few times because it was a gradual, like, OK, I'm not gonna be able to take these things off for like 14 hours. So all of that, along with things that happened like this: people weren't ready for me to be blind, even though we're shootin' a movie. At one point, they went, 'And that's lunch.' And everybody took off. And I'm like, you know...
Tavis: In the movie, in fact.
Jamie: In the movie, in fact. And so that was his life. So now we were hittin' on those levels, so Ray wanted to play music, change music so well until they started bringing lunch and dinner to him. And that's the things that I was thinking about the whole time. And then, the last point of it was the Ray Charles impersonation is this.
Tavis: When you see you in this character, you have again--I keep--I'm lauding this on you 'cause it's so good.
Jamie: Thank you.
Tavis: When you see you play this character, you have him down so well to the point that you just made, all the small things that made him Ray. You got this thing down so tight. Tell me honestly, what was the most difficult part about playing him? And what was the part that you really just found--that just came easy to you? You said, 'Why, this is too easy.'
Jamie: Well, here's the thing. The difficulty is no files, no research, nothin' you could just lock into as far as visually--
Tavis: You had him.
Jamie: Yeah, we had him, but he was older. So the older Ray Charles was, 'You know, man...' You know, it was a little more, you know, seasoned. So Quincy Jones got me a cassette tape.
Tavis: You got the Q down.
Jamie:
So anyway, I take the cassette tape, and on the cassette tape, it says, 'Hi, this is Dinah Shore from ‘The Dinah Shore Show.' Here are two very wonderful musicians here today, Mr. Kenny Rogers and Mr. Ray Charles.' And in the background you hear this young Ray Charles: 'Hello, you know, Dinah, I'm just so happy to be here, and--' Very, very fast, and I don't want to, you know, give it away, but it was very fast and very, like, energetic, you know, so I used that as DNA through the whole film.
And then, on the tape, Dinah Shore goes, 'Talk about the drugs, Ray.' And complete silence for about 4 or 5 seconds. And then he started to stutter, so I would use that in the film as DNA, that every time he's confronted with, 'Ray, you did wrong. Ray, you got this lady pregnant. Ray, you're doin' these drugs.' We stutter, we backtrack. We hide behind those glasses even more. So it was all the different things we went through, Taylor Hackford and I. Every single frame and sliver of the film we're gonna give nuance. Even to the thing with the glasses. If you notice, when you go back and look at it again, he never took his glasses off when he was with a woman that wasn't his wife.
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Jamie: He only had his glasses off with his woman. That was his way, and our way, of showing that, when he puts the glasses on, it's a lot of things he's hiding behind.
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Jamie: You know, his emotions, his fears, and everything. Once he puts the glasses on he's Ray! And that's that Superman of him. But when he takes those glasses off, that's the Clark Kent, that's the docile Ray.
Tavis: What came easy for you?
Jamie: The easy--I don't think anything came easy.
Tavis: But you're so good at impersonations that--
Jamie: The thing is, if you do the impersonation for hours, then it wears on you. It's like, 'I'm gonna get tired of that.' I'm gonna tell you when it got-- when it became fun. After the hours of learning the 96 music cues, the band and myself, we actually became Ray Charles. They actually became the Raelettes. That was really-- that was really Fathead Newman.
Tavis: Yeah.
Jamie: And we would have a gig. And that was the part that was the fun part, and once we got goin' on that, uh, that's what made it easy. It made it easy for me to stay up till 5:30 in the morning and get up at 7:00...
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Jamie: ...and then work for 12 hours, 'cause we were really feelin' like, 'Man, could you imagine bein' these cats at that time?' Like if you listen to an Usher record in the club, or anybody, you gotta go buy the record, you gotta see the video. But imagine bein' a cat in the forties and the fifties when you're actually the Usher record. You're actually playin' where people are lookin' right at you and, you know, gettin' that vibe. So those were the fun parts. Not necessarily...
Tavis: I'm like you. I don't want to give too much away, but I do want everybody to go see this movie. It's a brilliant piece. Um, Ray apparently didn't have a problem with y'all tellin' the truth about his life, 'cause there's some ugly up in there.
Jamie: There is. And that's the great part. It's like, if you watch a biopic and everything is great, everything is fantastic. You're like, 'OK, all right, the dude was fantastic, or the lady was fantastic.' He said, 'I want people to know the real story because from those impurities, from those imperfections came beautiful music.'
A lot of pain in the music, though. If you listen, when he's singing 'America,' he's singing from a lot of pain, as Aunjanue Ellis had put very, very eloquently when she was talking about Ray Charles and listening to his music. The pain of what he was going through, the obstacle course of racism, when-- Here's a man who's blind, but you got the ignorance of black bathroom and a colored bathroom.
So I would get Ray going like, uh, he was the first Internet connection, meaning that all of the bad things and good things that was goin' through his music came out and connected all of us. Hit song in America, hit song in Germany, hit song in France, and it connected us. So all of the things that you see in the movie allows you to, one--be intrigued. Like, 'Wow, how's he gonna kick this?' 'Cause the drug thing was really--for all of the hundreds of guys that did drugs because they thought they were gonna play like Charlie Parker or they thought they were gonna play like Ray Charles that died. And here's Ray Charles, who did it as rough an' tough as anybody, and still came out of it. That's--it's a unique thing.
And I think the uniqueness of Ray Charles goes even further. I say this about certain people that I really think are special. Uh, that whoever created--whether you believe in God or you believe in Allah or whoever the creator is--that when they were creatin' Ray Charles, they took a little extra time. When the angels came, they said, 'Nah. Stop the conveyor belt. I'm gonna make him unique. I'm gonna make him different.' So out of all of the millions of years that the world has been existing, only one Ray Charles.
Tavis: I think they slowed down the conveyor belt when they got to you.
Jamie: Well, man...
Tavis: 'Cause they made you unique and special. So much so, it ain't just the acting, it ain't just the comedy. You done signed another record deal, so you're gonna sing again.
Jamie: Yeah, man, we--
Tavis: With J Records.
Jamie: Well, yeah, with Clive Davis, and I know Clive is chompin' at the bit to really announce it the right way. Clive Davis, Brion Prescott, my man Marcus Kane, we got a record label Foxhole Chameleon. I'm gonna do my album off of it. It's gonna be very, very, uh, grown. Uh... It's gonna have some things in there.
Tavis: Some things. You put some things in it!
Jamie: Things in it, man! I was ridin' one day, and I heard this song called, 'I Hate My Baby Mama.'
And so I came up with a song called 'You Still Got It.' And it's what we take to Roberta Flack, 'Killing Me Softly.' The girl asks, 'Do I look fat to you?' I say, 'No, baby, you know I love you.' 'I didn't ask you that. Do I look fat to you?' 'Well--' And she really is fat because she's pregnant. She's having my baby. She runs into the bathroom, and we start singing the song...
I'm still in love with your figure, unh, unh, unh,
I'm still amazed by your smile, yeah
So you're gonna see all of that.
Tavis: She's still got it.
Jamie: Man, she's still got it.
Tavis: I'm outta time, but you still got it, Jamie.
Jamie: Man!
Tavis: Jamie's still got it.
Jamie: Tavis Smiley! Jamie Foxx! The record.
Tavis: If you don't...
Jamie: Music and commentary.
Tavis: Stop, stop!
Jamie: Afterparty and social at...
Tavis: That's our show for tonight--stop, Jamie. As always I'll talk to you on the radio. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Go see Ray. Good night from L.A. and keep the faith.
Back to October 27, 2004