Comic Foxx gets serious for 'Redemption'
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
As he drove to meet the man he would portray, Jamie Foxx was in unfamiliar territory.
Foxx is a comedian and an actor starring in "Redemption," at 8 p.m. Sunday on cable's FX. He was meeting the man he would portray, Stan "Tookie" Williams, an inmate on San Quentin's death row.
"It puts you off," Foxx says. "It's hard to go (there) in your Mercedes."
Williams was convicted of killing four people. It was a tense moment.
"(Williams arrived) in chains," says producer Rudy Langlais. "And you're locked in a cage with him."
Then the surprises began. "The way he spoke was so eloquent," Foxx says.
That's what "Redemption" is about. It tells of Williams' transition from gang leader to author and peace advocate. It tells of a condemned man who has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize and once for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"This movie (asked) a dramatic question," says Peter Liguori, the FX president. "Can a man redeem himself? And, in this instance, can a man who's been convicted of the most heinous of human acts redeem himself?"
It takes time, says actress Lynn Whitfield.
"Twenty-three years (in prison) is a very, very long time," Whitfield says. "Our system is set up to give people a chance to rehabilitate themselves, supposedly. ... It is a theme throughout our literature, that redemption is possible."
Whitfield plays Barbara Becnel, a journalist who was researching a book about the Crips, a brutal gang. So she went to the source.
Williams was only 16, living on his own in South Central Los Angeles, when he and Raymond Washington merged two gangs to form the Crips. They absorbed other gangs and were challenged only by the Bloods.
Washington was killed in 1979 and new violence erupted. Two years later, Williams was convicted of murder after a shotgun robbery in a convenience store.
When Becnel met him, Whitfield says, they were opposites. Gradually, Whitfield says, the two connected. "This woman is an extremely exacting, committed, focused, tunnel-visioned kind of human being," she says of Becnel. "She wanted to tell me everything about Stanley 'Tookie' Williams and nothing about herself."
Becnel co-wrote children's books with him. Williams also spoke out against gang violence and helped engineer a peace treaty between the Bloods and the Crips.
This is the type of story that FX — the network of "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck" — is drawn to.
Vondie Curtis Hall, better known as an actor ("Chicago Hope"), was chosen to direct. Whitfield, an Emmy-winner for HBO's "The Josephine Baker Story," was a logical choice to co-star; Foxx, 36, was more of a surprise.
He's mainly done comedy, but says he's known tragedy. "My father ... had $23 of illegal substance on him in Texas," Foxx says. "And they put him in jail for 10 years."
Foxx was only 7 months old (then named Eric Bishop) when his parents broke up. The same Texas couple that had adopted his mother adopted him.
That brought him a straight-arrow childhood. He was a Boy Scout, a choirboy, a star quarterback and a college music major.
Then comedy followed. He did stand-up, starred in "In Living Color" and "The Jamie Foxx Show." Things turned serious when he starred as a quarterback in Oliver Stone's 1999 "Any Given Sunday" and drew rave reviews for his portrayal as a corner man in Michael Mann's 2001 "Ali." Soon, he'll star in Taylor Hackford's "Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story."
That's not to say that comedy has been forgotten, Foxx says.
"I got those jokes waiting on you."
Still, he feels "Redemption" takes precedence.
"We're living in such a pop world and everything is so fluffy and so fly-by-night. Everybody wants to get a chance to do something great like this."
