There's little doubt Jamie Foxx is quite the dude. He's won an Oscar for Ray and found success in drama, comedy and music. In Law Abiding Citizen, which is out on DVD and Blu-ray today (April 12th, 2010), he plays Nick Rice, the assistant District Attorney who Gerard Butler’s Clyde Shelton blames for the light sentence the killers of him family received, and who therefore is the subject of his cendetta. We spoke to Foxx about working with Butler and how he went about becoming a hotshot lawyer.
Tell us about working with Gerard Butler on LAW ABIDING CITIZEN?
At the end of the day the film all comes down to Gerry Butler. We’re going live this movie through him. We’re going to live through his emotions. We’re going to live through his love of his daughter and his wife that he lost and also the anger that engulfs his whole being and so it’s really on him. He’s doing a great job and then we react off of him.
He told me you and him had a lot of fun boys nights out.
His take on life is great he just, he embraces it and then he’s a spiritual cat as well. He went to India and got in touch with his spirituality, which is great!
And what about your director, F. Gary Gray?
His eye is incredible. When you see the movie it looks great. Right off the bat you see it’s epic. He shoots it epic and not a lot of directors are able to do that. And his sensibility of how actors work is incredible.
So the film’s got some style?
The way the film looks. It just, you feel it, it’s heavy it’s deep. And the way he’s shooting you get the feeling that the city of Philadelphia is a character. Those courtrooms we’re coming in and out of, he makes them come to life. Some of the shots are just incredible.
How did you prepare for your role as a hot-shot District Attorney?
I talked to DAs and I talked to defence attorneys. They have a very, very different outlook on each other. My defence attorney teams, they hate DA’s because they think that DA’s are all about what they do – putting people in jail, the system. And DA’s despise defence attorneys because they handle some of the most scummy, law breaking people in the world. It’s an interesting world. They’re gladiators, and you know, they have to fight it our every day in court. You have to have that tough skin.
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Was this helpful in developing your character, Nick Rice?
Well, we all understand that he’s a highly competitive guy. He’s doing everything he can to get his conviction rate up to 99 – 100% and he’s moving up the career ladder, but the problem with that is when you start to take all of the emotion out of it, situation like Clyde’s (GERARD BUTLER) can happen. I spoke to the defence lawyers to find out how they felt about prosecutors and they talked about how arrogant they thought they were. I used that to develop the character, especially in the beginning of the film.
When you were doing your research into the justice system did you find the film to contain any truth?
Well, the thing is, the justice system is not a perfect system. It has a lot of flaws to it and it’s the best system we’ve got, but at certain points its justice just can’t be served the way we want it to be served all the time.
The film plays incredibly well to audiences, people just go crazy. Do you think it’s because there are so many shocking scenes this movie?
I think so and I think that’s what we need. We’ve become so sensitive and I just want to collectively kick the whole society in the balls right now with a big steel shoed shoe. I know the chances that F Gary took and to see the smiles he would have on his face and when Gerard’s character kills the guy in the cell, they were all laughing, “this is crazy!” You know its just time for that.
So after working on so many films over the years, do you prefer comedies or dramas?
Dramas are great but when you’ve got a great comedy there isn’t anything like it!
CLICK HERE to read our interview with Gerard Butler
Momentum Picture releases Law Abiding Citizen on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on April 12th, 2010
