Robert Downey Jr. Stands By ‘Tropic Thunder’ for ‘Railing Against Tropes That Aren’t Right’: ‘Things Have Gotten Very Muddied’ With Audiences
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. has long defended his role in “Tropic Thunder,” the 2008 comedy from director Ben Stiller that cast the “Iron Man” star as an egotistical Australian thespian who takes Method acting to an extreme by undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to darken his skin in order to play a Black solider in a war movie.
Some have come down on Downey Jr. in recent years for doing Blackface in the film, but the actor has never agreed with the backlash.
During an appearance on Rob Lowe’s “Literally!” podcast while on his “Oppenheimer” awards campaign trail, Downey Jr. drew a line between “Tropic Thunder” and Norman Lear’s iconic sitcom “All in the Family.” He said both works shine a light on “tropes that are not right and had been perpetuated for too long” and faced criticism from those who weren’t seeing the bigger picture. “I was looking back at ‘All in the Family,’ and they had a little disclaimer that they were running at the beginning of the show,” Downey Jr.
said about the backlash Lear sitcom’s face for tackling social topics like racism in a way network television never had before. “People should look it up, exactly what it is, because it is an antidote to this clickbait addiction to grievance that [people seem] to have with everything these days.” The“All in the Family” disclaimer read: “The program you are about to see is ‘All in the Family.’ It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns.
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