Robert Downey Jr didn't regret wearing blackface to play his role in Tropic Thunder and has spoken about the reaction people had to the movie.
Tropic Thunder is brought up as one of those films you apparently couldn't make today, with the war movie spoof attracting particular attention for having a white actor (Downey Jr) wear blackface.
In Tropic Thunder, Downey Jr is a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude, which is to say that he's pretentious Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus playing Sgt Lincoln Osiris.
Advert
Since the character Downey Jr's character is playing is black the actor wore blackface for the role and it's while it's portrayed as controversial in the movie there has still been a backlash for doing it.
The use of blackface is called out by other characters in Tropic Thunder, as Alpa Chino (Brandon T Jackson) slates Lazarus during several scenes where the actors stop to argue about their characters.
Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Downey Jr explained why he took the role and how he doesn't regret playing the controversial part even if he did admit to having a bad feeling about it at times.
Advert
He said: "I thought 'yeah I'll do that, I'll do that after Iron Man' and then I started thinking 'this is a terrible idea, wait a minute'.
"Then I thought 'hold on dude, get real here where is your heart' and my heart is: A, I get to be black for a summer in my mind, so that's in it for me."
"The other thing is 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, just my opinion."
Downey Jr went on to say that it was 'impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie', but said that about 90 percent of his black friends had told him 'dude, that was great' after seeing Tropic Thunder.
Advert
When asked about the others who didn't see it the same way the actor said he 'can't disagree with them but I know where my heart was'.
While it's one of those movies that gets mentioned as the sort of thing you couldn't do today, there are plenty who still find it incredibly funny and have no problem with what Downey Jr did.
His Tropic Thunder co-star Jackson said the movie 'would not work right now' because opinions had become more polarised, but wasn't offended by the blackface.
Advert
Jamie Foxx also spoke about it on The Joe Rogan Experience to say he once told Downey Jr 'you played the black dude and you killed that s**t'.
Tropic Thunder director Ben Stiller recently responded to fans who told him to 'stop apologising' for the movie to say that he would 'make no apologies' for the film and had been consistently proud of it.
Stiller said the movie was 'always meant to make fun of actors trying to do anything to win awards' in addition to lampooning some of the most famous Vietnam War films.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Robert Downey Jr, Joe Rogan