Mario Van Peebles on New Jack City’s heightened reality and enduring legacy • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

New Jack City’s legacy extends to your recent work on Nemesis, a Netflix series that you executive-produced, and which you directed the first two episodes of. In the opening scene of the first episode, in fact, Y’lan Noel—playing master thief Coltrane Wilder—is styled after Nino Brown.

Imitation is the best form of flattery. Why not just plagiarize myself? [Laughs] But actually, that was not my idea. It was already in the script. When I read it, I thought, ‘That was some fun shit.’ In fact, someone posted online a shot of Wesley, and then a shot of Y’lan, that said, ‘Who wore it better?’ Later on in the episode, they recreate Martin’s New Jack City parody skit. Fun footnote: Martin Lawrence was the other actor we were considering to play Pookie. It was between Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence.

In any case, when you find a truth, there are going to be references [made] to it. We had fun with it, but [New Jack City] is the start of a conversation. Depending on how you look at it, Nino Brown and Ice-T’s New Jack cop are empowered Black men, and empowered Black men in a world that is threatened by the power of Black men are very attractive to us. Nino doesn’t have to kiss any ass once he gets past the Italians. He gets to be that guy. That’s attractive, because we don’t see that kind of Black male imagery. My father had that. But he found his own voice. I think I have a version of that too. I found my own rhythm with it. When people get to be who they are and don’t have to leave a lot of that at the door, that’s attractive.

You don’t look at Clarence Thomas and go, ‘Oh, I want to be like Clarence Thomas.’ [Laughs] You just know that man is getting a beatdown at home. It just doesn’t look like a lot of fun. So, with Nino—and the way Wesley plays it—there’s a side to that character— and I’m going to go a little far out on the limb here—of the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ cowboy that we’ve grown up with, but we haven’t gotten to see ourselves in. Muhammad Ali had it. Malcolm had it. King had a different version of it. Marvin Van Peebles had it. The Panthers had it.

Our rappers have it now, and they inherited it without the bravado of Malcolm and without the political ideology of the Panthers to support it, which can sometimes be problematic too. Because then you can be manipulated and turned against your own people. Now, you’re no longer rapping and saying, “Fight the power.” You’re saying, “Fight each other.” Now, you’re not saying, “Freedom by any means necessary.” You’re saying, “Get paid by any means necessary.” You’re conflating money with freedom. Crack makes money, but it’ll kill you. Fossil fuels make money, but they’ll kill you. Ultimately, unconscious capitalism will lead to the death of humanity.