Chris Tucker’s breakout film role was in 1995’s Friday, a top-10 movie with a day of the week in the title. (Other good day-of-the-week movies: Freaky Friday, Friday the 13th, His Girl Friday, The Long Good Friday, and some non-Friday movies, probably.) The comedy was a hit, making over $27 million on a small budget and millions more on home video, but Tucker declined to appear in the aptly-titled sequel, Next Friday. In response to a tweet claiming that he quit over money, Ice Cube shared what actually happened.
“We were ready to pay Chris Tucker $10-12m to do Next Friday but he turned us down for religious reasons. He didn’t want to cuss or smoke weed on camera anymore,” he tweeted. This checks out with an interview Tucker gave in November, when he told All Urban Central, “Back then, I gotta tell you, one of the reasons why I didn’t do the second one was because of the weed.” Tucker continued:
“That movie became a phenomenon. I don’t want everybody smoking weed and I never really told people this because I kind of forgot about it, but it was one of the reasons why I didn’t do it. Because I said, ‘I don’t wanna represent everybody smoking weed.’ And that’s one of the reasons why I said ‘Nah.’ I didn’t wanna keep doing that character. It probably was good for me because it kept me moving to the next phase and next movies.”
Next Friday came out in 2000. By then, Tucker had already starred in The Fifth Element, Jackie Brown, and Rush Hour, and he would soon appear in Rush Hour 2 and Rush Hour 3. He was doing fine without the “$10-12m” from Next Friday. That being said, although Tucker’s filmography since 2010 consists of only two movies — Silver Linings Playbook and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk — he would “definitely consider” returning for a fourth Friday movie. As long as Ice Cube doesn’t ask to borrow his sh*t.
(Via People)
