Since putting down the mic at the turn of the millennium, former NWA rapper Ice Cube has starred in an array of films and TV shows, building an illustrious career as an actor. However, on the set of one classic film, the actor found himself legitimately frightened after a mechanic malfunction almost killed his co-star Jennifer Lopez.
While in NWA, Ice Cube didn’t think he had the knack for acting. However, spurred on by the late director, John Singleton, the rapper gave it ago in the 1990s as the offers began to roll in. Speaking about Singleton, Ice Cube told Uptown Magazine, “he believed in me before I did because I thought you had to be trained to act!”
In 1997, the Compton rapper (real name O’Shea Jackson) got cast in a film alongside Jennifer Lopez. Directed by Luis Llosa, in 1997, Jackson began filming for Anaconda. The horror film had a star-studded cast that included the likes of Jon Voight, Owen Wilson, and the renowned pop star Jennifer Lopez, who was dating Diddy at the time.
Due to the stellar cast, the movie had an extensive budget, which allowed for an extremely fancy set with world-class equipment and technology. Even though it was the best on the market, because it was the ’90s, Anaconda’s monster was animatronic, and, regardless of how much they cost, robotic mechanisms can be extremely dangerous.
Speaking to the Pardon My Take podcast, Ice Cube once recalled how Lopez and the crew had to battle the humongous robotic anaconda in real life. Remembering the event, the rapper revealed, “The snake was an animatronic thing, you know, weighed about a ton. You know, it was like heavy cause it was hooked up to this computer. And one day the snake malfunctioned and almost killed Jennifer Lopez on the set. They couldn’t stop it, and it just started tearing up the set.”
He continued, “So, we were really scared of this damn thing. It’s thick, and it’s made of metal wrapped in like a tire, so it’s hard as sh*t,” the rapper added. “And we was like, ‘Yo, this thing is just gonna malfunction and bust my nose open’, cause it just went crazy. It had a lot of glitches in it, so we were really scared of that damn fake snake!”
Speaking humorously with Big Cat and PFT Commenter, the podcast’s hosts, Ice Cube, addressed the long-running stereotype surrounding black actors always getting the chop first in horror movies, disclosing, “I only did Anaconda cause I didn’t die and got to help kill the snake.” Although both Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube are okay it is no doubt that they were both petrified while filming Anaconda. You can watch the trailer for the film in the video below.
