Taye Diggs Was Constantly Beat out by Rappers for Film Roles
Actor Taye Diggs found himself in frequent competition with rappers-turned-actors when it came to movies. And this had a negative effect on his film career.
Taye Diggs couldn’t get certain film roles because of rappers
A few celebrities have had issues with the idea of rappers becoming actors without putting in the proper effort for the craft. Veteran star Samuel L. Jackson was once particularly against the concept, so much so that he sometimes avoided doing films with other rappers.
“To take people from the music world and give them the same kind of credibility and weight that you give me, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker — that’s like an aberration to me; you just can’t do that,” Jackson once told Sacramento Bee (via Entertainment Weekly). “It’s not my job to lend credibility to so-and-so rapper who’s just coming into the business.”
Jackson also felt rappers risked taking away jobs from aspiring actors who’d spent considerable time honing their work, which rubbed him the wrong way.
”I know there’s some young actor sitting in New York or in L.A. who’s spent half of his life learning how to act and sacrificing to learn his craft but isn’t going to get his opportunity … because of some actor who’s been created — and you can use the word ‘actor’ loosely,” he added.
All American star Taye Diggs may have had experience with the very thing that concerned Jackson. Diggs built up a successful film career for himself, but occasionally he’d find himself losing movie roles to other rappers despite his experience.
“There have been a ton of movies I wanted but didn’t get,” Diggs once said according to Contact Music. “It seemed like I was constantly being beat out by rappers. It would be down to me and someone else, and I’d find out that the someone else was a hip-hop artist.”
How Taye Diggs got into acting
Diggs credited his mother for giving him early access to an acting career. When he was younger, Diggs’ mother saw that her son had a natural ability for the arts. She pushed Diggs to pursue more artistic passions even though the actor had his eyes set on other interests.
“My mother said, ‘You ‘re talented, so go to school so you can work on this,'” Diggs recalled to The Herald Times. “I was upset because I wanted to go to a school that had sports. I wanted to play on the athletic teams and what not. But then I took all the classes — I took dance classes, I took singing classes and acting classes and enjoyed doing them all equally.”
Going to acting class not only changed Diggs’ professional life, but his personal life as well.
“Before that school, I was a nerd,” he said. “I wasn’t very accepted, as far as a lot of the social groups are concerned, so I really found myself at that school. Friends that I have today, those relationships were formed there. It was a lot of fun.”
Since then, Diggs has thrived in theater as well as both on the big and small screens. Although there were times he preferred theater work to cinema.
“Making movies is very tedious,” Diggs said. “There are so many stops and starts. It can be maddening. But I’m adjusting to it all. Eventually, I would like to get back to doing theater. Maybe when something good comes along.”
Taye Diggs parodied a rapper in the film ‘Malibu’s Most Wanted’
In the popular Jamie Kennedy comedy Malibu’s Most Wanted, Diggs ended up playing an actor pretending to be a rapper. Diggs noticed the irony in the role, which helped lure The Best Man star to the raunchy comedy.
“That is one of the main reasons I was attracted to the role or rather the script as opposed to the role– it was an interesting hermetic comedy on almost a cliché topic and a really interesting take on it with all of the different stereotypes especially today when hip-hop is so pervasive,” Diggs once told Black Film.
