Actors make decisions about what roles they will take for all sorts of reasons, money, challenge, the location of the shoot, and sometimes, apparently, vodka. It seems that vodka, specifically the vodka produced by Grey Goose, actually played a part in bringing Jeremy Renner on board the upcoming Spawn movie, though, no, he did not sign a contract while drunk.
It seems that Todd McFarlane, the creator of the Spawn character who will also direct the upcoming movie starring Jamie Foxx in the title role, was interested in bringing Renner on board the film in the role of Detective Maximilian Steven Percival "Twitch" Williams III and had gone to meet with him about taking the part. The next morning, McFarlane awoke to Jamie Foxx's most recent interview in the Off Script series, a collection of interviews Foxx has been doing with different actors as part of a video series commissioned by vodka producer Grey Goose. As luck would have it, this most recent video in the series included Jamie Foxx speaking with one Jeremy Renner. According to McFarlane...
Yeah, I didn't know they were going to be talking! They didn't know I was talking-- he didn't know I was talking, I didn't know he was talking. Again, I don't know when they recorded it either you know, they could've recorded it two months [earlier], I don't know. But I go, 'Oh, they at least know each other in some capacity.' So I text Jamie and go 'Hey Jamie, we're all trying to nudge the Renner team here, if you could chime in a little bit...' So he helped too. They looked good together.
So thank you vodka for helping to bring together two great actors. Clearly, Jamie Foxx wasn't privy to everything that McFarlane was working on, and thus it's possible that if the director hadn't seen this video, it never would have come out that Foxx and Renner knew each other. Once Foxx knew the score, he apparently reached out to Renner and also pushed the actor to take the part, which Renner eventually did.
As Todd McFarlane says, it's possible the actual video interview between Jamie Foxx and Jeremey Renner -- who McFarlane calls Mr. Renner the entire time speaking with ScreenRant -- was filmed months ago and the two hadn't actually seen each other in a while, but the coincidence was certainly remarkable. You can check out the interview in question below.
As Todd McFarlane says, Foxx and Renner certainly look good together. While the interaction between them in Spawn probably won't have quite as many laughs on screen, Spawn is a pretty dark story, they'll likely have a lot of fun behind-the-scenes. Probably with vodka.
