They're dropping like flies: add another excised name to the impressive cast left out of this winter's "Django Unchained." Following Kevin Costner, Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony LaPaglia out the door, the runaway Quentin Tarantino production also has shed frequent QT collaborator The RZA.
In an exclusive interview with The Playlist, the rapper/actor/director told us he had to regrettably drop out of the picture earlier this year. "I'm not in 'Django Unchained,' " he told us. "I gave my role up to a buddy. Can you believe that?" When asked who will fill in for the role of Thaddeus in Tarantino's Spaghetti Western slave epic, the Wu-Tang'er turned filmmaker wouldn't disclose the name, though he downplayed it considerably, claiming it was, "Just another buddy that trained with me." You'd have to be a bigtime player in Hollywood to simply give up a role in the hottest film of the holiday season, but The RZA had completely reasonable obligations. "It's my fault," he says, crediting time spent on post-production for his long-in-the-works martial arts epic "The Man With The Iron Fists" that opens later this fall. "I got stuck in editing. I couldn't do it." In other words, don't look for any drama here, folks.
Meanwhile, The RZA will have you know that the entire cast of "The Man With The Iron Firsts" will... if you can believe it... fuck you up. See below for further evidence. "Django Unchained" opens on December 25th, while "The Man With The Iron Fists" punches into theaters November 2nd. More from this interview soon.