WESLEY SNIPES
“I DIDN’T WANT TO BE TYPECAST AS BLADE”
Wesley Snipes’ voice is quite something. Not only does the 58-year-old actor speak theatrically in a smooth, resonant timbre, he also drops several spot-on impersonations during our chat, and frequently explodes in uproarious laughter. He’s sage-like when talking about his talent, health and wellbeing. “My spirit is good,” he beams at the top of our Zoom chat in February. “I’m divinely inspired and spiritually motivated.”
It’s no surprise to find him in fine fettle. His latest role, General Izzi in Coming 2 America, sees him stealing the film amid a wealth of comedy talents. Reteaming with director Craig Brewer and Eddie Murphy – following Dolemite Is My Name, the 2019 film that also showcased his comedy chops – Snipes seems comfortably out of his comfort zone.
For many cinemagoers, he’s best known as an action icon, following a rapid-fire string of ’90s genre hits: Passenger 57, Demolition Man, U.S. Marshals et al. But his filmography tells a more varied story, with Spike Lee collaborations (Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever), comedies (White Men Can’t Jump, To Wong Foo.) and dramas like Mike Figgis’ One Night Stand, for which he won the Venice Film Festival’s Best Actor Volpi Cup.
To a certain generation, though, he’ll be inextricably fused to Blade, Marvel’s badass human-vampire hybrid (Snipes’ Zoom handle is ‘OG Daywalker’). The plasma-drenched first instalment 1998 preempted the box-office potential of the new wave of Marvel comic-book movies. Snipes brought gravel-toned charisma and physical gravitas to the role over two more films: Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II, and the inauspicious Blade: Trinity.
Blade made him a cinematic immortal, and affection for those early roles helped him weather an extended run of direct-to-video films, and a prison ruling. In 2008, he was sentenced to three years in prison for failure to file $15m worth of federal tax returns. After losing his appeal, he was jailed in December 2010, serving two-and-a-half years.
If the big-ticket roles have been fewer since, reliable collaborators have provided notable highlights: he’s reteamed with Lee and Stallone (), plus there’s those Murphy comedies. When asks if it meant a lot to have people like Murphy opening the door to him after his conviction, it’s the only time during the interview when
