Robert Downey Jr. Defends His Controversial Role in TROPIC THUNDER, Comparing It to the Humor of ALL IN THE FAMILY

Robert Downey Junior. He’s surprisingly never won an Oscar, although that may change this March, as he’s set to take home the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Oppenheimer. The only two Academy Awards for which he was nominated were his starring role in the 1993 biopic Chaplinin which he played groundbreaking silent film star Charlie Chaplin, and a supporting role in the 2009 comedy tropical thunderin which he played a selfish Australian actor who takes Method acting to the extreme by undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to darken his skin in order to play a black soldier in a war film.

The latter role was highly controversial, as seeing an actor wear blackface in a film was a long-obliterated tradition. But Downey defends the role, the film and its director and co-writer Ben Stiller, who along with Downey believed the audience was in on the joke. He made fun of the kind of people Downey was playing, which might have justified the choice, but the audience as a whole was divided.

In a recent interview on “Literally!” by Rob Lowe the Downey Jr. podcast talked about the role and what he set out to do, and also compared the two tropical thunder and Norman Lear’s iconic sitcom All in family.

“I was rewatching ‘All in the Family’ and they had a little disclaimer that they were putting out at the beginning of the show. People should look up exactly what it is, because it is an antidote to this clickbait addiction and the rancor that [people seem] have with everything these days.

THE All in family disclaimer reads: “The program you are about to watch is All in family. It seeks to cast a humorous spotlight on our fragilities, prejudices and worries. By making them laughable, we hope to show – in a mature way – how absurd they are.”

“The language said, ‘Hey, this is why we’re doing these things that, in a vacuum, you could pick apart and say are wrong and bad.’ Before there was an understanding with the public, and I’m not saying that the public no longer understands, I’m saying that things have become very confused. The spirit is that [Ben] Stiller directed, cast and shot ‘Tropic Thunder’ essentially as an invective against all these clichés that aren’t right and [that] had been perpetuated for too long.

During a 2020 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Downey Jr. recalled that his mother was “horrified” when she learned of his role in tropical thunder. His mother said to him, “Bobby, I’m telling you, I have a bad feeling about this.”

Downey Jr. said at the time that he, too, had a bad feeling about it tropical thunder and the potential backlash it might generate, he still thought to himself, “I can stand up to nature, to the crazy selfish hypocrisy of artists, and to what they think they are allowed to do on occasion.”

He went on to add:

“[Ben Stiller] he knew exactly what the vision for this film was, he made it happen, it was impossible not to make it an offensive nightmare film. And 90% of my black friends were like, “Man, that was awesome.” I can’t disagree [the other 10%], but I know where my heart is. I think that’s never an excuse to do something that’s out of place and out of time, but for me it crossed the line [the issue]. I think having a moral psychology is job one. Sometimes you just have to say, “Yeah, I fucked up.” In my defense, “Tropic Thunder” is about how wrong it is [Blackface] it is, so I take exception.

What do you think of RDJ’s role in? tropical thunder? Did you get the spirit of their comment about blackface or do you think it missed the mark?

via: Variety