Foxx's Vice

Talking to Jamie Foxx at the Jarhead junket, we couldn’t resist the chance to grill him about Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, which seems to have been shooting for about a thousand years. In truth, it’s been filming since June, but there’ve been a few problems…

“We got a little bit more to do. I don’t know when we finish. ‘Cos, you know, the hurricane has put a dampener on us,” says Foxx, referring to the destruction and chaos that’s hit New Orleans and Florida in the last couple of months. “It’s crippled us. We can’t even shoot in Miami right now.”

Still, he’s clearly having a blast reuniting with Mann and working with co-star Colin Farrell: “He’s just the lady-killer. We had a couple of parties in Miami and I was introducing him around, and it’d be, you know, it was Spanish so [feigns swooning woman rabbiting away in Spanish]. And so the seed of magnetism that this guy has is perfect for the role. That’s the thing that I think he’s needed to come his way. He was great in Tigerland, but this right here – he can be Colin Farrell, and you can be a wild dude and do what you want to do. It’s working great.”

And he’s almost as enthusiastic when you get him talking about making the movie itself: “With me, I understand my Tubbs-ness, and my Tubbs-ness is to be there for Crockett. You know, Tubbs is the ultimate Ed McMahon and Crockett’s the ultimate Johnny Carson. And in Miami Vice, the series, you get married to these characters but you really go through what Crockett goes through – every single decision, whether it be love or lust or crime. So that’s what you have to understand.”

Prepare to, er, get married to these characters in 2006. Probably. If they finish in time.