Marcel Friday

INTERVIEW: MC Eiht Reveals Origins Of Shelved Movie Opposite Bernie Mac & Lisa Raye

Originally posted on HipHopDX 6/27/2017

Perhaps one of the biggest mysteries of MC Eiht’s career is that we never saw him in a major role on the big screen after his standout performance in Menace II Societyas the cap-pillin’ South Central native, A-Wax. While the Compton MC explains his lack of interest in Hollywood, he divulges of a potential Blackbuster hit that was seized by the feds before it could ever see the light of day. 

“I’ve never really actually went after movie roles,” Eiht explained during a recent episode of #DXLive.” [If] somebody felt that I was fit for a part or do good in a particular situation then I would usually just let them come and ask me if I wanna get down. As far as like getting an agent and going after movie roles, I never got into that. I was strictly emceeing. That was my thing. A lot of times when you get into the Hollywood thing, you gotta conform to somebody you really don’t want to be or they try to change you into something. I just felt that trying to keep my own authentic direction with music that I wouldn’t go after roles. It’s not like people didn’t call me but a lot of stuff was comedy shit, a lot of stuff was Uncle Tom shit so I just backed away from it. I did Menace II Society and then that came with Thicker Than Water and then I had a little role in the Freeway Rick story. Just little bullshit. Who Made The Potato Salad, I did a little role. Then I shot a movie in Chicago that was called Reasons but it was government, political drug shit so they seized the movie and it never came out. We shot this movie maybe 15 years ago. Bernie Mac was in it. Lisa Raye was in it. It was a drug movie. A dude called Nathaniel Hill; he was a pretty big drug dealer and he basically made a movie about it. They seized the movie because he basically told the story of how he came up. He was on a worldwide run, they extradited him from Africa. We shot it in Chicago. It took us maybe four months to shoot it. Real big movie. Spike Lee’s producer [Monty Ross] directed it. It was gon’ be a big, large movie. I played the lead role. It was a real neighborhood pic but it was governments and indictments and courts and all that; followings and grand jury’s so they basically seized the movie.”