Former N.W.A rapper and actor Ice Cube will not be complying with Hollywood’s vaccine mandates. And the hip hop mogul and 21 Jump Street star isn’t just talking about rejecting mandates, he actually put his money where his mouth is and dropped a movie he was set to star in over the production’s COVID vaccine requirement.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on October 29 that Ice Cube, whose real name is O'Shea Jackson Sr., has pulled out of Sony’s upcoming film comedy Oh Hell No, “after a request from producers to get vaccinated.”
Cube was cast for the film in June along with School of Rock star Jack Black, who is also a producer on the project. Filming for Oh Hell No was set to being this winter on location in Hawaii, though now Sony has to push back production to acquire a new lead, as well as letting Black heal from an injury acquired during a taping of Conan.
Cube, his personal representative, his agency WME and Sony have yet to comment on the rapper’s decision.
Newsweek.com noted that Ice Cube’s pullout from the film meant he would be losing a “$9 million payday.”
What is also interesting is that Ice Cube is not necessarily a COVID skeptic. Throughout the pandemic, the rapper has participated in campaigns to raise COVID awareness, to include heavily promoting people to mask up.
In April 2020, Cube even started selling T-shirts featuring art depicting the rapper in a mask, with one of his famous rap lines: “Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” As Hollywood Reporter noted, proceeds from those T-shirt sales would “benefit frontline health workers.”
Though at the same time, Cube is very adamant that he and the people he loves are not taken advantage of by the government or other oppressors. It’s (naively) why he took up the Black Lives Matter cause last year.
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And even more surprisingly, Cube’s concern for the African American community almost superseded his support for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. In October 2020, Cube stated, “I'm not on team blue or team red. [Racial inequity is] not a Democrat problem, it's not for them to solve. It's not for the Republicans to solve. It's for both of them to solve.”
Cube also angered a ton of leftists around that time, when he indicated that he also talked to Republicans ahead of the election to hear their arguments about why Trump would be a great choice for African Americans in 2020.
Yeah that sounds like someone who values his freedom more than sticking to the Democrat party narrative. Going against the vax mandate is a total Ice Cube thing to do.