Cousins! Appearing within a recent interview Ice Cube revealed to fans of the cult classic original film Friday why actor and comedian Chris Tucker didn’t return for the sequel despite the millions of dollars that were offered to him!
In conversation on the ‘Full Send’ podcast the West coast native revealed that Chris had been offered over $10M dollars to appear in ‘ Next Friday’ however he turned it down. “You’ll hear 1,000 different stories but we wanted to pay him $12 million to do that movie and he turned it down,” said Ice Cube.
He continued in saying, “He said it was for religious reasons,” he continued. “He didn’t wanna cuss and he didn’t wanna smoke weed on camera.”
Ice Cube also gave Chris his props on executing the role of Smokey while admitting that he is ultimately cool with how things turned out. “But I’m glad he didn’t do it ‘cause we wouldn’t have Mike,” he said. “Mike, to me, is funnier.”
‘Friday’ was originally released in 1995 starring Ice Cube, Chris Tucker, John Witherspoon, Bernie Mac, Nia Long, Tommy Lister Jr. and more.
Mike took on the role of Dae Dae in both ‘Next Friday and ‘Friday after next’ released in the early 2000. He played the hilarious sidekick to his cousin Craig portrayed by Ice Cube.
In a previous interview when asked why he declined to reprise his role of Smokey Chris stated, “Back then, I gotta tell you, one of the reasons why I didn’t do the second one was because of the weed. I said, man, that movie became a phenomenon.
He continued, “I don’t want everybody smoking weed — and I never really told people this because I kind of forgot about it, but it was one of the reasons why I didn’t do it. Because I said, ‘I don’t wanna represent everybody smoking weed.’”.