Spike Lee is urging fellow cinephiles not to sleep on ASAP Rocky as an actor, as he holds his own against Denzel Washington in the upcoming Akira Kurosawa reinterpretation Highest 2 Lowest.
In a Tonight Show interview on Thursday, Lee, whose new film also features Jeffrey Wright and Ice Spice, had high praise for Rocky’s performance as aspiring artist Yung Felony.
“Yeah, don’t sleep on ASAP,” Lee told Jimmy Fallon. “In this film, Denzel and ASAP go toe to toe. What’s interesting is, even before I got involved with this film, I always thought that ASAP looked like he could be Denzel’s son. There’s a big resemblance. So when you see it on the screen, it adds an element of father and son. Don’t sleep on ASAP.”
After making five films with Denzel, including Malcolm X and Inside Man, something Spike says he’s noticed is that some actors “get overwhelmed” when doing scenes with the Oscar-winning actor. That wasn’t the case with Rocky, whose own filmography also includes turns in Dope and Monster.
“I’ve done five films with Denzel and a lot of times when he’s in a scene with somebody, they just get overwhelmed because he’s one of the world’s greatest living actors today,” Lee said Thursday. “But ASAP wasn’t having that. Toe to toe. I mean, they were going at it.”
Highest 2 Lowest is in theaters Aug. 15, followed by an Apple TV+ release Sept. 5. The reviews are very strong indeed.
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