In a recent Roundtable interview, Danny McBride revealed that Kanye West once asked McBride to play him in a potential biopic.
In a Roundtable interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Danny McBride recently opened up about one of the more bizarre interactions he’s had in his career. The Righteous Gemstones actor talked about how he went out on a boat in South Carolina with Kanye West for the day and how West then opened up to him about an idea for a biopic in which McBride would play West.
This isn’t the first time this story has come up, as McBride talked about the same occasion back in 2019 on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
At the end of the nearly hour-long discussion with the comedians, host Lacey Rose’s final question to the group was simple: out of anyone in the industry, who do you most want to have call you up to work with them? The answers started out relatively mild until the end. Michael Che referenced many of those dream collabs coming true on Saturday Night Live. Jerrod Carmichael said he’d love to play business mogul David Geffen so he could get onto Geffen’s massive yacht. But after a lull in laughter, McBride shocked the table.
“One time, I did get a phone call from Kanye West, and, this is real, he came to my house in South Carolina and wanted me to play him in a movie,” said McBride. Everyone else at the roundtable stared at McBride in disbelief and confusion before an array of questions came in. Bowen Yang piped up, “you to play him?!”
“Yeah,” McBride continued, “[Kanye] flew down to South Carolina, and I took him out in a boat for the day, and he said that he wanted…me to do a movie of his life, and he wanted me to play him.”
Yang queried, “In an [Todd Haynes’] I’m Not There Bob Dylan way? Like, Cate Blanchett?”
Love Hip Hop?
Get the latest Hip Hop news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
I’m Not There is Hayne’s 2007 experimental biopic about Dylan’s life where Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin take turns playing the songwriter. McBride escaped the question and simply said, “It was one of the most incredible days ever; it was pretty awesome.”
Lacey Rose circled back to the topic afterward and asked, “What are the follow-up questions that you then lob [to Kanye]?” But Carmichael cut in, referencing the idea as a Tropic Thunder situation (as in, McBride would essentially perform blackface if he played Kanye as Robert Downey Jr. did in the 2008 film). Not necessarily, depending on how Ye would want McBride to be portrayed in the potential documentary.
