Ice Cube is responding to comments made by comedian, writer and actor Katt Williams about the pay, casting and an alleged rape scene in the Friday franchise.
The rapper and producer took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Friday to address several statements made during Williams’ recent interview on former NFL star Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast. In a nine-minute video, Ice Cube said he had “a lot of love for Katt,” who “spoke up for me a lot,” but he “wanted to be clear to clarify some things.”
That includes denying he would film a rape scene after Williams told Sharpe that he had pushed for the removal of a sexual assault sequence from Friday After Next. “I would never shoot a rape scene in a movie, especially Friday, where you actually see this happening on camera. That ain’t my style,” Ice Cube said. “The plier joke was always in the script. We would never ever show that. That’s not my style if you look at any of my movies. So, that was never a discussion.”
The scene Ice Cube references sees Williams’ pimp Money Mike cornered in a bathroom by Terry Crews’ Damon, a man recently out of prison who has been lording over Craig (Ice Cube) and Day-Day (Mike Epps) for rent money. During his interview with Sharpe, Williams said “Money Mike, in the original script, got raped in the bathroom” — something he advocated should be cut.
“The problem with Friday After Next is we’re trying to make a classic comedy, and this comedy involves a rape, and rape is never funny no matter who it happens to or what the circumstances are,” he said. Williams added that he told filmmakers that “if you would allow me, allow us to do this movie without a Black man getting raped in it, I promise you it will be twice as funny.”
The comedian told Sharpe his ask was “risky” as it was his very first movie, but said he had to “humbly, respectfully” request the change “in front of the studios and the cast and the powers that be.”
“If we’re talking about anything else, I have no credibility and I have no pull, but we’re talking about comedy, where I have all the credibility and all the pull,” he continued.
Ice Cube called this a “discrepancy” in how he and Williams remembered things. “At that point in everybody’s career, we will listen to a certain extent, but we wasn’t gonna change the movie for it. For any actor, you know?” he said in the video. “We do what we feel and if it was a rape scene, it would have been in the movie. There was no reason not to shoot it. But that’s not my style.”
During his nearly three-hour interview, Williams also addressed those who have been critical of how much they were paid to appear in the Friday franchise, calling them “ungrateful bastards.”
“What do you mean the independent Black dude who’s filming it partly out of his fucking pocket — what do you mean he didn’t pay you enough?” he said.
Ice Cube added to Williams’ response, noting that most of the budget for the Friday films went into the film itself. “Most of these guys worked a couple of days. When you’re doing a movie, there’s over 100 people working on the movie that need to get paid. Most of them got to get paid every day. There’s pre-production and post-production. Even after you finish with the acting, you gotta pay editors and sound people in,” he said.
“And my movies are all about quality, so most of the money go up on the screen,” he continued. “I’m not giving you low budget shit you can laugh at because it’s so cheap.”
At another point in his nine-minute video, Ice Cube addressed Williams’ writing credits on the Friday threequel, after Williams told Sharpe he had been approached by the rapper and producer to write a fourth installment. Without confirming Williams’ claim that he was asked to script a new chapter, Ice Cube credits Williams’ for enhancing the role of Money Mike that was on the page.
“Money Mike had a small role, about as big as the Santa Claus role, but when we started filming, [Williams] was giving us such magic that we kept expanding his role and giving me more to do because he was on point,” he explained. “But we shoot to script. Once we get what we need from the script, we let the comedians ad lib, riff, play with the words — do they thing. We give them two, three takes where they can go off and do what they feel.”
He also clarifies the history around casting Williams as robber Santa Claus in Friday After Next and Williams as pimp Money Mike. In 2022, Rickey Smiley, the comedian who portrayed Friday After Next robber Santa Claus told the Pierre’s Panic Room podcast he “was supposed to be the pimp and Katt Williams was supposed to be the Santa Claus.”
Williams addressed Smiley while talking to Sharpe, telling the former NFL player, “I can tell you this, we auditioned in Los Angeles. I was audition No. 201. Two hundred Black comedians auditioned for the role of Money Mike with me.”
“[Smiley] told everybody it should have been my role,” Williams added. “So considering that’s the real story, why would you bring up that story? Thirty-five members of the cast have never brought up that Rickey Smiley was going to play Money Mike.”
According to Ice Cube, “Ricky did give Money Mike a shot, but when we saw him and … how he moved and how he was auditioning, we decided that he would be a better Santa Claus, which was to me the perfect casting. When we saw Katt, when I saw him, I just knew that he was perfect for Money Mike.”
