‘Cocaine Bear’ star O’Shea Jackson Jr. shares how a retweet landed him the gig
Written by ABC AUDIO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on February 22, 2023
In just a few days, one of the most hyped and anticipated movies of the year, for some, hits theaters – Cocaine Bear!
The film was something star O’Shea Jackson Jr. was excited about — in fact he tells ABC Audio it was his fervor after seeing a tweet about the movie that got him the job.
“It said Elizabeth Banks gets the rights to Cocaine Bear. And I clicked it and I read it and I retweeted something like, you know, take my money or just praising up how crazy that movie sounded,” he recalls. “She got wind of it and made the call. And then they asked me if I wanted to be in it. And I said, ‘Absolutely.'”
“I [had] always been taught to never do a movie you wouldn’t go see. And I was going to go see this movie whether I was in it or not,” Jackson Jr. adds.
For Alden Ehrenreich, who co-stars in the dark action comedy, it only took reading the script for him to join the project.
“I thought it was so fun and so bizarre,” he shares. “And it’s so great for like a studio movie that’s this big to be an original idea and so kind of unique and out there.”
Being enthusiastic about the project is only half the battle though. Even though Jackson Jr. actively campaigned to be in Cocaine Bear, he admits it wasn’t an easy shoot.
“I don’t really like the woods…I’m a gamer. I’m a city guy. I don’t like fake blood, and wasps and bees love fake blood. So it was a lot of avoiding them,” he explains. “Any type of wind that would blow, now you got leaves in your stubs and, like, it’s just not a good time.”
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