Sometimes, our co-workers like to poke fun at us for small, simple things. Be it a quirky behavior around the water cooler, or a particular collection of tchotchkes collected on your desk, there’s always something to be funny about. For Hobbs & Shaw’s Idris Elba though, that particular subject was his participation in the movie/potential nightmare fuel factory Cats.
Which means that there’s probably a ton of stories involving Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham mocking Elba for playing the role of Macavity. And sure enough, during a recent appearance on late night TV to promote Hobbs & Shaw, the man himself shared this anecdote to confirm such suspicions:
When I was working on Hobbs & Shaw, just after that I went to work on Cats. So I’m working with Dwayne and Jason. As soon as they found out I was working on Cats, this was their favorite thing to do as I walked on set. We’re doing this big fight scene, I’m walking in looking all bravado, and they’d be like, ‘Hey, Idris, what are you doing next?’ And the crew would be like, ‘What are you doing next?’ [I’d go] ‘coughs Cats.’ I don’t know, Hobbs & Shaw, Fast & the Furious, Cats, it just…
It is a bit funny to imagine that the man who bombastically proclaims himself to be “Black Superman” in Hobbs & Shaw would shift over to playing a villainous feline in director Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the already trippy Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. But what’s even funnier is imagine Johnson and Statham busting Idris Elba’s chops between action fueled takes, over that very project.
You’d have to imagine this may have stoked the fires for some of the fight scenes that Hobbs & Shaw shows off with Elba kicking both men’s on-screen asses. However, at the same time, this story that the man currently known as Brixton Lore told on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert probably means that both Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are going to most definitely check out Cats when it’s released.
Between the good natured kidding that both men have visited upon Idris Elba, and the fact that Cats is a Universal Pictures release, much like Hobbs & Shaw, there’s no way that Johnson and Statham don’t get an invite to the premiere, or some other advanced screening that will take place in the months before the film’s December release. They pretty much have to see the movie now, especially after this story has been told about their interest in Elba’s role in Cats. So really, who’s laughing now?
It’s all part of Rebel Wilson’s theory that for as much viral reaction as the Cats trailer has stoked on the internet, there will just be that much more attention paid to the film’s finished produce once it’s released. Of course, now we can add Idris Elba as a conspirator in the endgame to draw more attention to this piece of feline cinema.
Who knows who’ll be next on the list of folks to tell you that you should see Cats in theaters on December 20th. All we know is that the further this furry plot spreads, we’ll be keeping up with the twists and turns that spiral out from its shadowy paws.
