Rapper Common has been appearing in a lot of movies this year, starting with Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces and Ridley Scott’s upcoming American Gangster, but he apparently has not only gotten the acting bug but also the bug for comic book movies. Next March, he appears in Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted as the gun-savvy Gunsmith, but in recent weeks, there’s been rumors that he’s one of the actors testing for the part of John Stewart/Green Lantern in Warner Bros.’ fast-tracked Justice League movie.
ComingSoon.net/Superhero Hype! sat down with the rapper to talk about his latest role but we squeezed in a couple questions about his comic book movies before we were cut-off. First, we asked about the difference between working with Timur vs. Joe Carnahan, both of whom are visual action directors, to which he responded, “It was definitely different because Timur would change the scene right then and there, very spontaneous, and plus, he doesn’t speak English as clear. He’s very much an artist, and so is Joe, but Joe had a certain vision and you knew what it was and knew what he wanted. You could improv and do things like that, but Timur was almost like ‘Let’s just paint together.’ I liked it, though, it was fun.”
We asked him if he got the comic bug while doing that movie or whether he was a fan of comic books. “I just like to go out for good roles, anything, that’s all it is really, whether it’s a comic book or true story or whatever it may be. I wanna be a part of great projects, but yeah, I’m familiar with Green Lantern because I collected (them) when I grew up.” When we asked how the auditions went, it was obvious that he had been prepped well by his handler, because he said with a smile that he couldn’t talk about it right now. (Tomorrow is the press conference for American Gangster and maybe someone will get more out of him about it then.)
Look for the rest of our interview with Common over on ComingSoon.net sometime in the coming weeks. Wanted is scheduled to come out on March 28, 2008.
