Where has Leonardo DiCaprio been???

Anywho! The stars of the upcoming film Django Unchained, Kerry Washington, Jamie Foxx & Leonardo Dicaprio sat down with Vibe magazine for an exclusive interview and chatted it up about the film’s criticism and slavery.

Check out excerpts below:

Jamie Foxx on his role as a slave turned gun-slinging bounty hunter:
Every two, three years there is a movie about the Holocaust because they want you to remember and they want you to be reminded of what it was. When was the last time you’ve seen a move about slavery? What we were doing was an acrobatic routine with the highest degree of difficulty. It’s a tough script to read. I had both my daughters come down to the plantation and I walked them through and said, “This is where your people come from. This is your background.

Kerry Washington on the film
This is not a doc. This is a Quentin Tarantino film. But I remember there was this one moment in the script where Jamie’s character was put in an awful crazy medieval metal mask. I said, “That’s some sick thing Quentin thought up.” And when I went to the production office to meet about my wardrobe, I saw into the research office. Twenty photos of real masks like that. It made me sad. I realized as much as my degrees and everything I’ve read on slave narratives [should have informed me], I didn’t even know that they wore masks like that, that people did that to us. It took a Tarantino movie for me to know that that’s not some crazy thing out of his imagination. That’s how it went down.

Leonardo Dicaprio on playing such a wicked character
For me, the initial thing obviously was playing someone so disreputable and horrible whose ideas I obviously couldn’t connect with on any level. I think it took me to places I didn’t even imagine. I remember our first read and it was hard for me to wrap my head around it. My initial response was “Do we need to go this far? Are we going too far?

[...] This is the first legit bad guy I’ve ever had to play, and it is a fucking horrible [character]; the worst display of humanity I’ve ever read in my entire life. Not even just because of who he was and the racism, but because he is just the most self-indulgent bastard I’ve ever read.

Jamie Foxx on the criticism the film received from blacks who objected the treatment of slavery after seeing the trailer
Put it this way: I completely understand what you’re saying. ‘Cause as black folks we’re always sensitive. As a black person it’s always racial. I come into this place to do a photo shoot and they got Ritz crackers and cheese. I’ll be like, ain’t this a b-tch. Y’all didn’t know black people was coming. What’s with all this white sh-t? By the same token, if there is fried chicken and watermelon I’ll say ain’t this a b-tch? So, no matter what we do as black people it’s always gonna be that. Every single thing in my life is built around race. I don’t necessarily speak it because you can’t.

Peep the movie trailer below: