Jamie Foxx grew up in the small town of Terrell, Texas, and when he was young, the town was still segregated. He told EW that growing up in that environment taught him what it was like to be ostracized simply because of the color of his skin. He also helped him understand why Quentin Tarantino had included such egregious language, which was heavily criticized by others. Sure, it was appropriate for the period and location, but it wasn’t appropriate in any other context. Foxx knew him intimately, however, as he was called racial slurs when he was a child. There were parts of the South that he embraced, but he “understood that [racism] It was part of the fabric.”
More difficult than language was filming at the Evergreen Plantation in Louisiana, once a real working plantation. Foxx explained his feelings during filming and revealed that he took her daughters to the plantation in an attempt to teach them some of her personal history:
“It was hard to shoot the movie. It’s hard to shoot when you’re in the plantation row and that’s where your ancestors were hunted down and killed, and we respect that.”[My daughters] they saw it as an amusement park, but they really understood, especially my eldest, that his ancestors came from here, and the youngest, as any child would, just played. She didn’t understand the meaning then. But she will.”
His youngest daughter may not have gotten the history lesson Foxx was hoping for, but her performance in “Django Unchained” became part of movie history, if nothing else. Fans who want to see Django say goodbye to Miss Laura again can stream the movie on Paramount+.