6/2/2023 0 Comments Usher moviesIt was nice that Richard was still playing his same character, Sam was playing his same character, and they kind of took the pressure off of me from being that same type of Shaft. Jackson and Roundtree both seem very generous with how they share the screen with you, the new guy. ![]() Usher had to work to earn those kudos, but he enjoyed it: “Having the three of us join together to fight the bad guys. “This film gives new life to a character who’s been around for a very long time, and it’s fun to watch Sam now passing the baton to Jessie, who more than holds his own,” he says in the film’s production notes. Roundtree returns the compliment, to both of the newer John Shafts. It felt like I was in a Shaft movie the moment he stepped on set.” So it was nice to see that - and to have that. The way he talks to people is very Shaft-y. “The way he carries himself, the jewelry he wears, and the way he just walks around with a cigar in his hand. That kind of just happened through the whole shoot.”Īs for Roundtree, “he’s 100% Shaft, still to this day,” Usher says. “Sam would do something intentionally, seeing if I’m watching, and then when I caught it, we’d have this unspoken moment. Jackson and Roundtree were also checking him out - especially Jackson. “Even if it’s not verbal, even if it’s just a demeanour or how they carry themselves, or it’s just like little things here and there that they’ll say or do, you just start paying attention, you start picking up on things.” “They kind of both walk in and just start giving it,” Usher says in an interview during a recent Toronto visit. Usher began his daunting assignment by observing how his two predecessors moved. JJ finds himself working with, but also in opposition to, the retro-Shaft ways of Jackson, 70, and Roundtree, 76, who previously wore the shades and rocked the Glock. How did the genial Usher, 27, best known for playing sports heroes ( When the Game Stand Tall, TV’s Survivor’s Remorse) and a planetary saviour ( Independence Day: Resurgence), stand up to be the new John Shaft? His curse-averse millennial take, JJ for short, is an MIT grad working for the FBI as a cyber security expert, who is so anti-gun “he could easily be Canadian!” Usher jokes. The film will have fans of the franchise thinking they’re seeing triple: son, dad and grandad, relative versions of the complicated man who no one understands but his woman. Shaft’s back in the chamber for the multi-generational action-comedy also titled Shaft, directed by Barbershop’s Tim Story and now in theatres. ![]() Title anti-hero of the 1971 Blaxploitation classic starring Richard Roundtree, reprised in 2000 with Samuel L. Yes, I’m talking about Shaft, that bad mother (shut your mouth!) of a private dick. Usher is the new cat who won’t cop out, when there’s danger all about.
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