Wesley Snipes seemed to have everything in the 90s and early 00s. He was a film star, gifted, gorgeous, chiselled from top to bottom. Box office gold. There seemed to be no genre he couldn’t star in: thrillers (detective Thomas Flanigan in King of New York), action movies (drug baron Nino Brown in New Jack City), sports comedies (basketball hustler Syd Deane in White Men Can’t Jump), LGBT comedies (drag queen Noxeema Jackson in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar), arthouse romances (commercials director Max Carlyle in One Night Stand) and dramas (architect Flipper Purify in Jungle Fever). In 2004, his salary was a reported $13m for producing and starring in the third Blade blockbuster, Blade: Trinity. Snipes could not have been flying much higher. And then he fell.
Boy, did he fall.
First came the stories that he was difficult to work with. Then nearly all his films started going straight to DVD. In 2008, he was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $5m for wilful failure to file $15m worth of federal income tax returns. Snipes lost his appeal against conviction and in December 2010 he was jailed. After serving two and a half years, he was released in 2013.
Snipes, 58, is sitting in a recording studio when we Zoom. With his deep velvet voice he sounds like the world’s smoothest jazz DJ. He looks the part, too – turquoise turtleneck, green cap, headphones and a long chain he says is a “Quantum Receptor … but that’s a bit too heavy for this conversation”. Behind him is a sign that reads “Daywalker Klique”. I ask what that is. “The Daywalker Klique is a global community of multi-talented hyphenates, skill masters, adept at doing more than one thing extremely well on a mission to bring light to the world of darkness,” he replies. Snipes tells me he is a founder member. My head is spinning already.
Could he be more specific? “For instance, you might have someone who by day is a senator and by night is a rock’n’roll guitar player. And you might have somebody who by day is a nuclear physicist and by night is a professional karaoke artist.” And they have such members? “We do!” Can he give me names? “Nooooo!”
Snipes has never been backward in coming forward. He’s quick to tell me about the ways in which he is a multi-talented hyphenate. “I’m a good thinker. I’m an excellent student. I’m a skilled dancer. I can sing. I can also write very well – I’m an author. I can do graffiti. I can cook very well. People are less familiar with my forays into technology and telecommunications.” And he has not even mentioned the acting or his fifth dan black belt in Shotokan karate.
Snipes has not done many interviews since his release from prison. There has been no need; he hasn’t had much to promote. Some old friends stood by him: Spike Lee cast him in his 2015 film Chi-Raq, an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, and Sylvester Stallone hired him for The Expendables 3, playing a character newly released from jail after being banged up for tax evasion. But now it looks as if he really is on his way back. Last year he starred with Eddie Murphy in the successful comedy Dolemite Is My Name, about the blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore. Next he is appearing in Coming 2 America, the long-awaited sequel to the 1988 monster hit Coming to America, which again stars Murphy.
He says we’re going to love it, and suddenly he’s in character, telling me that he plays General Izzi, the brother of the woman Eddie Murphy’s Prince Akeem left at the altar in the original. “I have been vexed about it ever since. Sooooooh I think there’s going to be a probleeem. We can do it hard or we can do it easeeeeey!”
I drag him back to the real world.
How does he think his conviction affected his career? “You’ll have to get that perspective from those in the business who were the gatekeepers. As far as the streets were concerned, it didn’t change their appreciation for my work and my artistry one bit. Not one bit.” Was he offered big roles after his release? “Yeah, yeah,” he says uncertainly. “I’ve been offered some great roles. I haven’t done another project with Marvel, but working with Eddie Murphy was a phenomenal opportunity for me.”
Snipes grew up in the Bronx and attended New York’s School of the Performing Arts – the “Fame” school – where he studied dance, singing and acting. When he was 15, his mother moved them back to Florida, where he was born. He went on to study drama at the State University of New York.
In one of his first interviews, in 1991, he talked about being arrested and falsely accused of stealing a car – when he protested, one of the police officers kneed him in the neck. I say that when I read this recently, I couldn’t help thinking of George Floyd. He nods, and suddenly he’s back in 1991. “It wasn’t just the knee to the neck, I had a gun put to my head. They did what was standard protocol in those days in Los Angeles. There was supposedly a robbery in the area and the police saw the red Mustang and the black guy driving, and it was: ‘Get out of the car, get on the ground. You move and I’ll shoot you in the heeeead.’” He pauses. “That wasn’t the first time it happened to me.”
In 2007, when he was facing a maximum 16 years in prison for the more serious charges of tax fraud and conspiracy – of which he was later cleared – Snipes’ lawyers claimed he would be unable to get a fair trial in Ocala, Florida, because of its pervasive racism. They pointed out that Snipes had never lived in the city (he lived in Orlando, 80 miles away, but prosecutors claimed more of the alleged crimes took place in Ocada), that statues of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan had been erected there and that it was a “hotbed of Klan activity”. Snipes was accused of playing the race card. Meanwhile, last month the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump had paid no federal income tax in 11 of the 18 years its reporters investigated. Trump has never been charged with any crime, let alone convicted. Why does he think Trump got away without paying and he didn’t? “Well, that’s an easy answer. He’s the president of the United States.” But he got away with it when he wasn’t president. “This is not rocket science. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
He starts talking about his case. “The law says you pay for people who are experts to manage your business affairs, yet I was included as a co-conspirator with the lawyer and the accountants. Now this is rare. Very unusual situation.” Was it a miscarriage of justice? “Absolutely. Of course it was unfair.”
Snipes objects to the word prison, insisting on calling it “camp” – in other words, a minimum security prison. “The biggest thing I got from it was learning the value of time and how we often squander it ... I understand that very clearly now, having been away from my family and loved ones two and a half years.” Snipes has five children – the eldest is 32, the youngest 13; four of them are from his second marriage, to the South Korean artist Nakyung Park.
Did it make him reassess himself? Did he think he had been wrong and stupid? “All of the above.” He still believes he shouldn’t have been convicted, but he says he’s not entirely blameless. “I don’t see myself as an innocent bystander in any of it. I made decisions. I accept the ramifications of those decisions. No one forced me to take that person as my accountant; no one forced me to take that person as my lawyer. No one forced me to believe what they were saying. That was on me. I don’t have time to sit back and say I was wronged and recapture all that was lost.”
Anyway, he says, he wouldn’t want to do that. Snipes believes that overall it has been a positive experience. “I’ve gained so much more. I understand so much more. And if two and a half years of my life were in meditation and isolation up at that camp out of the 100 I plan on living, good deal. Goood deal!”
Did he come out a better person? “I hope I came out a better person,” he says. “I came out a clearer person. Clearer on my values, clearer on my purpose, clearer about my relationship with my ancestors and the great god and the great goddess above, and clearer on what I was going to do once I had my freedom back.”
I ask whether he had become greedy. “Greedy?” He sounds puzzled by the word, and chews it over. “I, errrrm, don’t think so. I didn’t focus on making money … You don’t see pictures of me wearing all the big chains and driving all the big fancy cars.”
That’s interesting, I say, because in many of your movies you do all of those things. “Yes and I didn’t want that persona to carry with me when I was off screen. I enjoyed being able to move through the community and environments without people knowing I was there.”
As so often with Snipes, he thinks on the subject, and adjusts his answer a moment later. Actually, he says, he did go through a period of playing the Big I Am. “I had the 200lb bodyguards, and all that stuff draws attention to you.” Did he need the bodyguards or was he just trying to impress? “When I started doing film, there wasn’t a school that taught artists how to deal with their success. You learned things by trial and error. You might say: ‘Well, this used to be the bodyguard for Muhammad Ali or Larry Flynt, and these cats are the baddest of the bad.’ You rock with that, because there’s nobody there to tell you otherwise. If you’re lucky you recognise that having this guy is a waste of time; he’s too big to sit in the plane seat so it’s going to cost me two tickets and when it’s time, he can’t even run. OK, plan B. No more of the big bodyguards, we’re done with that.”
I ask if I can read him a quote about his behaviour on the set of Blade: Trinity to see if he thinks it is fair. “Yes, yes, yes, which one is this?” It’s from the actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, I say. “A reliable authority on me,” he replies sarcastically.
I read the quote: “Wesley was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way … he tried to strangle [director] David Goyer.”
“Let me tell you one thing. If I had tried to strangle David Goyer, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me now. A black guy with muscles strangling the director of a movie is going to jail, I guarantee you.”
So that’s a no, then? “Did I go to jail for strangling him? Never happened.”
I continue with the quote. “For the rest of the production he would only communicate through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note ‘From Blade’.” True or not? “Hehehe!” He starts giggling, but he’s not amused. “Once again, Mr Oswalt is the authority. Hohoho! Why do people believe this guy’s version of this story? Answer me that.”
I’m not saying I believe it, I say. I’m simply asking if you think it’s fair. Now his voice is calm and professorial. “This is part of the challenges that we as African Americans face here in America – these microaggressions. The presumption that one white guy can make a statement and that statement stands as true! Why would people believe his version is true? Because they are predisposed to believing the black guy is always the problem. And all it takes is one person, Mr Oswalt, who I really don’t know. I can barely remember him on the set, but it’s fascinating that his statement alone was enough to make people go: ‘Yeah, you know Snipes has got a problem.’”
And still he’s not done. “I remind you that I was one of the executive producers of the project,” he says. “I had contractual director approval. I was not just the actor for hire. I had au-thor-i-ty to say, to dictate, to decide. This was a hard concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”
The problem is, Snipes says, that Hollywood is still run by white people for white people. “I don’t expect a white guy to go out and write the experience of a black guy growing up in the Bronx the way I grew up. How is he going to know that?” And that’s why he says black artists should follow the example of film-makers in, for example, South Korea or Nigeria. “The South Koreans are not sitting there complaining about not being included in Hollywood. They went and built their own. The Nigerians are not waiting for Hollywood to come along; they’ve got the third largest industry in the world.”
It is 33 years since Snipes got his first break in the video of Michael Jackson’s Bad, directed by Martin Scorsese. The storyline has Jackson as a gangster facing off against Snipes. What was Jackson like? “To me he was very gentle. He was funny. Michael asked me to teach him how to be a tough guy. ‘Teach me how to be hard,’” he squeaks à la Jackson. “I’m like, Mike, come on, you do what you do. I do what I do.”
Was he surprised when Jackson was charged with child sex abuse? “Yeah.” He pauses. “Quite. Quite.” Did he believe Jackson, who was ultimately acquitted, was guilty? “No. No. I didn’t.” Another pause. “By choice. You know, Michael Jackson’s contribution to the world is irrefutable, immutable, undeniable, indelible. So I choose to believe whatever was going on in his private life that I don’t know about is between him and his creator. Based on my experience with the man, I choose to believe in and focus on his magical contribution to the world.” Is that because he wants to believe in him? “Sure. Absolutely. I have a saying: I reject your reality and assert my own.”
Indeed, there are times when it’s hard to distinguish between objective reality and the reality Snipes asserts. He tells me about all the pioneering projects he is working on in science and technology, telecommunications, building new digital platforms, as well as all the film parts and his secret society bringing light to the world.
Is he wealthy these days? “Is that how you define wealth, by having a lot of money?” he demands. Has he got a new accountant? Does he pay all his taxes? Now he’s laughing. “I pay all my taxes. I’ve got new accountants, yeah, absolutely.” He’s still pondering the wealth question. “We’ll have a conversation very soon and you’ll say: ‘Wesley, you didn’t tell me you were planning on being a billionaire.’ And I’ll be like: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter that I’m a billionaire, it matters what we do with it.’ We’ll have this conversation next year and you’ll be like, holy shit, he wasn’t joking.”
And with that, he’s off to savour his freedom and assert his reality.
Coming 2 America is released on 18 December on Amazon