Jamie Foxx has confirmed Kerry Washington’s story about a rape scene involving her character Broomhilda getting cut from the original script of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
In the star’s 2023 memoir Thicker Than Water, she wrote about a “terrifyingly brutal rape scene” that was cut by Tarantino at the last minute, following advice from her co-star Foxx that she suspected “had finally seeped in.” She described its omission as “the answer to the prayers I had been whispering.”
During an appearance on the podcast Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, Foxx confirmed the story, although in his version it was a collaborative discussion. “If you read the script, Broomhilda and Django get raped,” he said. “But once we got together, Quentin and I and Kerry, we wanted to protect Kerry Washington. Why? Because movies are forever, meaning that if there is some bombastic scene, you can’t take it out and it’s forever.”
“And we wanted to make sure that we protected Olivia Pope,” Foxx added, referencing her character on the show Scandal, which was due to debut around the time the film was released. “I said, ‘Hey, she’s going to have this show and we want to protect her,’ and [Tarantino] was with it. So all of that sort of outlandish stuff left [the final script].”
Foxx was complimentary of Tarantino as a director, describing him as a “great leader”, while Washington also speaks warmly of the film in general. Speaking at a screening of the movie in June (via IndieWire), she said of her role: “Being the princess in the tower in this movie was an extraordinary act of forcing people to see our humanity, at a time when our humanity was denied. I knew that’s what Quentin was doing, and he and I talked about it, and it felt really important.”
Recently, director Ridley Scott responded to Quentin Tarantino’s assertion that his film Black Hawk Down was the best film of the 21st Century.
For help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.
The post Jamie Foxx confirms he asked Quentin Tarantino to cut rape scene in ‘Django Unchained’ to “protect” Kerry Washington appeared first on NME.