Robert Downey Jr. Defends His Controversial Role in TROPIC THUNDER, Comparing It to the Humor of ALL IN THE FAMILY
Robert Downey Jr. has shockingly never won an Oscar, though that may change this March, as he’s poised to take home the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Oppenheimer. The only two Academy Awards he has ever been nominated for were his 1993 lead role in the biopic film Chaplin, in which he played the groundbreaking silent film star Charlie Chaplin, and a supporting role in the 2009 comedy Tropic Thunder, in which he played an egotistical Australian thespian who takes Method acting to an extreme by undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to darken his skin in order to play a Black soldier in a war movie.
The latter role was highly controversial, as it has been a long-canceled tradition to see an actor wear blackface in a film. But Downey defends the role, the film, and its director and co-writer Ben Stiller, who along with Downey, believed that the audience was in on the joke. It poked fun at the kind of people Downey was portraying, who might justify the choice, but the audience as a whole was divided.
In a recent interview on Rob Lowe’s “Literally!” podcast Downey Jr. talked about the role, and what it set out to do, and also drew a comparison between Tropic Thunder and Norman Lear’s iconic sitcom All in the Family.
“I was looking back at ‘All in the Family,’ and they had a little disclaimer that they were running at the beginning of the show. People should look it up, exactly what it is, because it is an antidote to this clickbait addiction to grievance that [people seem] to have with everything these days.”
The All in the Family disclaimer read: “The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show — in a mature fashion — just how absurd they are.”
“The language was saying, ‘Hey, this is the reason that we’re doing these things that, in a vacuum, you could pick apart and say are wrong and bad.’ There used to be an understanding with an audience, and I’m not saying that the audience is no longer understanding — I’m saying that things have gotten very muddied. The spirit that [Ben] Stiller directed and cast and shot ‘Tropic Thunder’ in was, essentially, as a railing against all of these tropes that are not right and [that] had been perpetuated for too long.”
During a 2020 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Downey Jr. recalled his mother being “horrified” when she learned of his role in Tropic Thunder. His mother told him: “Bobby, I’m telling ya, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Downey Jr. said at the time that while he also had a bad feeling about Tropic Thunder and the potential backlash it could generate, he still thought to himself: “I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion.”
He went on to add:
“[Ben Stiller] knew exactly what the vision for this was, he executed it, it was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie. And 90% of my Black friends were like, ‘Dude, that was great.’ I can’t disagree with [the other 10%], but I know where my heart lies. I think that it’s never an excuse to do something that’s out of place and out of its time, but to me it blasted the cap on [the issue]. I think having a moral psychology is job one. Sometimes, you just gotta go, ‘Yeah I effed up.’ In my defense, ‘Tropic Thunder’ is about how wrong [Blackface] is, so I take exception.”
What do you think of RDJ’s role in Tropic Thunder? Did you get the spirit of their commentary on Blackface, or do you think it missed the mark?
via: Variety