Multiple links have been sent his way — three, by my count — to no avail. The imbroglio is excusable given the early hour and the number of different directions he’s currently being pulled, with 40 projects spread across 12 different networks, not to mention the podcasts, movies and revitalizing the city of Shreveport, Louisiana, home to his G-Unit Films and Television studio. We must chat via Zoom because 50 is back home in Houston, Texas, having decamped from his native New York City in 2021.
Directed by Kitao Sakurai (“Bad Trip”), the film centers Ryu (Andrew Koji) and his adoptive brother Ken (Noah Centineo), two seasoned fighters who are recruited by Chun-Li (Callina Liang) to enter a World Warrior tournament held by the dictator M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), who has designs on extracting Ryu’s fighting power for personal gain. 50 plays Balrog, a boxer who works for Bison with a distinctive hi-top fade and pointed-front hairdo. The character was modeled after Mike Tyson; and to get into fighting shape, 50 trained three hours a day for nine weeks, dropping from 238 pounds to 200 pounds.
These days, 50 — who is now 51 — is more business magnate than hip-hop artist, presiding over a sprawling TV empire that includes the “Power” universe and “Fightland” on Starz, and eye-opening documentaries like the Emmy-winning Netflix docuseries “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” that exposed the evils of the artist sometimes known as Diddy. He’s also prepping a Hulu docuseries on himself. He spoke about it all, from Trump and Diddy to the tragic loss of his mom and why he won’t work with “Power” showrunner Courtney Kemp again (along with her response), in a no-holds-barred interview with Variety.
They’re not even up and functioning from last night! I started playing with the idea of it ahead of time with my barber, and we decided there was no way to do it without cutting back into my hairline to create the outline of where [the hair piece] goes. It was tough keeping it in place once we started the fight scenes.
They were doing touch-ups all the time. When I got ready to get out of there, I had no facial hair and no nothing! I was like, yo, I have to do Vegas tomorrow!
I have to lose weight to look intensely in shape. I’ve got it, it’s just under the stuff. Some people fight their way up to gain mass, but I fight my way down.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
