“Too wong…feud?”
In an job interview on SiriusXM’s “Andy Cohen Reside,” John Leguizamo described his late co-star Patrick Swayze as “neurotic” and “difficult” to work with. The two actors starred in the 1995 drag queen cult classic “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Every little thing! Julie Newmar,” along with Wesley Snipes and Stockard Channing.
Leguizamo’s responses were spurred by host Andy Cohen’s recommendation that Swayze experienced a sterling standing among the his co-stars.
Leguizamo, 63, disagreed, “That’s distinctive than what I professional. Relaxation in peace, I adore him. He was just neurotic. And I’m neurotic too, but I really don’t know, he was just – it was tough performing with him.”
Eternally youthful, Leguizazmo is also famously outspoken in 2020 he boycotted the Emmys citing “cultural apartheid.”
Leguizamo equally slammed the enjoyment field for casting James Franco as Fidel Castro in an approaching movie challenge. “I really don’t obtained a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!” the comedian concluded in an impassioned Instagram publish.
Cohen prompt that Swayze, who died at 57 in 2009 right after dropping his fight with pancreatic cancer, might have been a perfectionist.
Leguizamo countered, calling the actor neurotic and insecure, “I never know, just neurotic, perhaps a very small bit insecure. Wesley and I, we vibed, ‘cause, you know, we’re men and women of color, and we’ve acquired each other.”
Leguizamo’s latest discussion with Cohen is not the 1st time he has publicly commented on his on-set differences with Swayze. In 2018, he relayed to a crowd at New York Magazine’s Vulture Pageant that the two nearly arrived to blows on the set of “Too Wong Foo.”
“One working day he informed me to shut up and I was like, ‘Make me,’” he continued. “We’re about to punch each individual other other than I’m in incredibly hot pants and pumps and he’s dressed like Audrey Hepburn…Wesley’s like, ‘Let him go. Permit him go,’ but the director stopped him.”
Leguizamo joked, “We have been so in character we were PMSing at the exact time.”
Leguizamo speculates that his improvisational acting style may possibly have been aggravating to the straight-laced Swayze.
“He could not preserve up with it, and it would make him mad and upset from time to time. He’d be like, ‘Are you gonna say a line like that?’ I go, ‘You know me, I’m gonna do me. I’m gonna just retain making up lines.’ He goes, ‘Well, can you just say the line the way it is?’ I go, ‘I can’t.’ And the director did not want me to.”
Leguizamo credits that off-the-cuff spontaneity for adding dimension to his portrayal of drag queen Chi-Chi Rodriguez.
“I invented my position. I rewrote that position,” Leguizamo said. “I expanded that role, ‘cause that job was practically nothing.”
Past the inventive variations involving himself and Swayze, Leguizamo is happy of the enduring effect and queer resonance of “Too Wong Foo.”
“It was really crucial due to the fact a whole lot of transgender children, [LGBTQ+] little ones arrive up to me, who are now I guess a minimal older, they mentioned due to the fact of that display and my character, they felt self-confident to arrive out to their mother and father,” stated Leguizamo.
“And I felt like, ‘Wow, which is what art’s meant to do.’ Art’s intended to give persons courage, art’s supposed to teach men and women empathy, which is what I obtained in the organization for.”
