Anthony Mackie Talks About Being the Next Jesse Owens

It's a little surprising, isn't it, that Hollywood hasn't raced to get a Jesse Owens biopic greenlit yet. You'd think with the rags-to riches-to redemption biopic craze and the inspirational anything-is-possible sports movie obsession that Owens, an authentic American hero, would be ripe. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens defused Adolf Hitler's weird "master race" thing by winning four gold medals in front of the Führer himself. Back home, his hero's welcome was stunted by much of the same racial prejudice he was met with overseas. This movie will be everything to all people. Revelatory historical lesson, Nazi thriller, inspirational sports pic, and the feel-good movie of the year! So what's holding it up? Truth be told, actor Anthony Mackie, who stars as Tupac Shakur in the upcoming Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious, has been slated to play the track star for a couple of years, and last week I had the chance to ask him about it.

“We’re putting it together now,” the charismatic actor told me at W New York. “It’s going to be a big thing. We’re chronicling his life from birth, to the ticker-tape parade down Park Avenue to The Waldorf Astoria, where he does all this stuff and basically defeats the German Empire. Then he gets to the Waldorf Astoria and he has to go around the back entrance. It’s like, really? He should’ve stayed in Germany ... they treated him better over there. So the whole movie was based around this quote that he gave. He was like ‘Everybody asked me how I felt when Hitler didn’t allow me up to the box to shake my hand ... well, you know the President didn’t invite me to the White House either.’ That sums up the whole movie. Hopefully that will come together.”