Robert Downey Jr. Talks About TROPIC THUNDER and Says His Mom Was Horrified When He Did It
One of the best and funniest roles that Robert Downey Jr. has ever played was as actor Kirk Lazerus in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. There’s no way in hell he would have been able to play a character like that in today’s politically correct climate. After all, his character made the controversial choice of putting on blackface to play an African-American Vietnam soldier named Lincoln Osiris.
Apparently this horrified his mother. While a guest on the Joe Rogen Experience podcast, Tropic Thunder came up and whether or not Hollywood would have made Tropic Thunder today. During the interview Downey revealed his mother's reaction to him taking on the role:
My mother was horrified. [Mimicking his mother's voice] 'Bobby I'm telling you, I have a bad feeling about this.' I was like 'Yeah me too mom, but uh anyway-- how are we?'"
The discussion then led to what the reaction was when he first showed up on the set of the film in blackface. Downey explained:
"All the night before... I was like 'Well, here we go.' And I think I had six lines that day, but I knew that there was going to be choppers; there was going to be squib fire; there was going to be choreography... it was going to be cacophonous. And the only thing that mattered to me was 'What's my action?' My action as an actor in this movie is to know what I'm doing, even if what I'm doing is insane. So I ran those six or eight lines I had a thousand times lying in bed... And so the next day I was free to enjoy myself and not be struggling to wonder what it was I was supposed to be doing. And then that's what it is, you know: it was one little mosaic after the next... and it was just a piece of work I was doing. And I cared about doing it as professionally and as honestly as I could."
So, he pretty much just showed up to do his job and he pulled it off brilliantly. What he ended up delivering was no easy task, and in the end, everything worked out and the movie was a big success.