You might have noticed the sequels to 1995 classic Friday were missing “Smokey” played by Chris Tucker. Well, there’s a reason for that. In a recent interview, Tucker said the reason why Craig’s (Ice Cube) partner-in-crime was missing from the next two films was because he didn’t want his character to promote people to smoke.
“I never really told people this ’cause I kinda forgot about it … I didn’t want to represent everybody smoking weed,” he said. “I kind of made it more personal than a movie … I wanted to move on because when I did something, I never wanted to do it again. Back then, I was all about going to the next level. I had a good sense of like, ‘OK, now it’s time to go do an action movie.’”
Later in the interview Tucker said he only made $10,000 for the film but was happy to just have the experience to make it.
“It’s one of those things — it was just a small movie,” he continued. “We filmed it in 20 days. I got about $10,000 for it or whatever, I didn’t care. I wanted the opportunity. It was that small of a movie, but that was the beauty of it.