For years, there’s been a story floating around Hollywood that Wesley Snipes tried to choke the director of Blade: Trinity. But in a new interview, Snipes said it “never happened.”
Patton Oswalt, who played Hedges in the film, alleged in a 2012 conversation with the AV Club that Snipes “tried to strangle” director David S. Goyer on the set of the 2004 film. Oswalt noted that the production was “very troubled,” and said Snipes “was just f—ing crazy in a hilarious way.”
Snipes addressed Oswalt’s comments in a story published this week by The Guardian.
“Let me tell you one thing. If I had tried to strangle David Goyer, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me now,” he said. “A Black guy with muscles strangling the director of a movie is going to jail, I guarantee you… Did I go to jail for strangling him? Never happened.”
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Snipes mentioned “microaggressions,” and said race may have something to do with Oswalt’s comments.
“Why do people believe this guy’s version of this story? Answer me that,” Snipes said about his former co-star, who is white.
“This is part of the challenges that we as African Americans face here in America — these microaggressions,” he added. “The presumption that one white guy can make a statement and that statement stands as true! Why would people believe his version is true? Because they are predisposed to believing the Black guy is always the problem.”
The Guardian article noted Snipes had long been labeled “difficult to work with.” Still, it said the actor’s friends, Spike Lee and Sylvester Stallone, offered him work on their films when few others would.
Snipes discussed going to prison for tax evasion and said he “came out a clearer person.”
“Clearer on my values, clearer on my purpose, clearer about my relationship with my ancestors and the great god and the great goddess above, and clearer on what I was going to do once I had my freedom back,” he said. “The biggest thing I got from it was learning the value of time and how we often squander it… I understand that very clearly now, having been away from my family and loved ones two and a half years.”
Snipes will next appear in Coming 2 America, alongside Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. The sequel to the hit 1988 film Coming to America, is scheduled to start streaming on Amazon in December.
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