Spike Lee is set to grace the 2025 movie schedule with a new film, Highest 2 Lowest, and it's being ushered out in style. This latest flick is set premiere at Cannes on the anniversary of one of Lee’s greatest movies, Do the Right Thing. This latest feature also reunites the director with esteemed collaborator Denzel Washington. Joining the pair as part of the cast is ASAP Rocky, and it turns out Lee has a chuckle-worthy reason for casting the rapper.
It says a lot for an iconic director like Spike Lee to want to hire you for a film, especially since the director is quite shrewd when casting. His upcoming crime thriller, which will eventually be available to stream with an Apple TV+ subscription, is a “reinterpretation” of Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese crime flick, High and Low, with Washington playing a music mogul involved in a kidnapping plot. While speaking on 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony, Lee got candid about what made him cast the “L$D” rapper, and I’m still laughing:
What's funny is that I was looking at Instagram four or five years ago and people were saying that A$AP looked like he's Denzel's son. Everyone was saying it. I seen those memes and then in the film, we used that.
I love that! Looking at the two performers, I can see the resemblance between them. Honestly, it's not often that you hear a director being partially influenced by social media memes when casting actors though, apparently, Lee couldn’t ignore them for his new movie. Quite frankly, I'm not sure I can unsee the resemblance between the two now.
Of course, there's more to casting than appearances, as actors must also have a creative spark. I’m really curious as to what Washington and Rocky's dynamic will look like on screen. We'll have to wait and see but, right now, Spike Lee is teasing that the rapper gives quite the performance. Not only that, but he apparently had no problem going toe to toe with the Othello star:
A$AP, man, he fire. I mean, there's some scenes where him and D [going] head to head, he ain't backing up. He's like, 'I'm here too.’
Based on Spike Lee’s kind words, I already have a feeling that ASAP Rocky is going to surprise viewers. He may be known for his Billboard Top 100 tracks, but he’s shown off his acting chops before in a few movies. He made his film debut in one of the best Black-led coming-of-age films, Dope, and also appeared in the Netflix legal drama Monster. Rocky will also appear in the upcoming A24 movie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
While working on Lee's film, the “Long Live ASAP” performer was in a prime position to learn from some brilliant creative minds. I'd be curious to hear about his experience working with Lee and Denzel Washington.
I'm hopeful that Highest 2 Lowest turns out to be another quality "Spike Lee Joint." If anything, I'm even more excited after hearing the Oscar-winning filmmaker hype up ASAP Rocky's work. Despite that, when I finally see the film for myself, I'll still be thinking about how those memes helped lead to Rocky's casting, and I'll probably chuckle about it to myself then, too.
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