O'Shea Jackson Jr Talks Gaming, Ice Cube, and Call of Duty

Jake Lucky: How do you like events like this?

O'Shea Jackson Jr: I love 'em. Especially with gaming, I've been dying for my fucking agents to put me into anything gaming for the longest. This is my life. This is my wheelhouse, so this is where I feel more comfortable than anywhere.

It is fucking, any of the anime conventions, video game, that's my world. Fucking wrestling, just straight, that's just me. That's when I feel the most comfortable.

Jake: We go to so many gaming events. I would love to see people like you around there, too. I feel like it's good conversation.

O'Shea: People don't think I'd go, and I'm like, "This is what I asked to do."

I went to E3 a couple of times, but the pandemic really changed shit, as far as that goes. It's not the same. But yeah, bro, my PlayStation's on pause right now. I left the house, came here, and I'ma go right back to that motherfucker.

Jake: So when did you first get into gaming? What's your first early memory of gaming?

O'Shea: Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog. And then my Uncle Adonis, rest in peace, he showed me Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider. Those were... Resident Evil, but I was little, bro. I wasn't trying to play that. That was wild. Especially 'cause the camera don't really follow you in the old school Resident Evil. It was all type of nonsense.

But Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, first love of my life. And now, dude, obviously any sports game, any 2K game, I'm just a complete sheep for, even though they keep just stealing money from me. Call of Duty, of course. And when I really wanna get nerdy and I really wanna just chill, I do Jurassic World Evolution.

Jake: Wow. Real shit right there.

O'Shea: Jurassic World Evolution, bro, fuck stegosaurus. All right? Fuck Stegosaurus, bro, they're like, you have to make five of them in order for them to be chill in the park. It's wild, dude.

Jake: That might be the craziest line I've ever heard.

O'Shea: Yo, fuck stegosaurus. O'Shea Jackson Jr.

Jake: When it comes to Call of Duty, though, when did CoD first cross your table? When did you first come across it?

O'Shea: Ooh. I need to fact check it, but it's for an older system. I played the old school Call of Duties. I didn't start taking it serious until my dad was in the game.

Is Ice Cube in a video game? Yep, I'm in Call of Duty. I play the guy who gets killed too soon in the video game. Black Ops. Black Ops, I was like, "Oh my God, I get to hear my dad on there." He hella dies. Spoiler. I was like, I've never seen my dad die in anything, and I was like, "Oh, shit." It affected me.

And me and the homies on Zombies until 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. That right there is some of my greatest memories. Obviously Modern Warfare II with the sawed-offs with the akimbo. Dude, running through that shit. Good times.

Jake: I wouldn't know the experience, so what is it like to sit down and play a video game that you really enjoy and all of a sudden your dad's voice is on it?

O'Shea: It's just like a "No way." And for it to be Call of Duty, first of all, he fit. What really tripped me out is getting into multiplayer and he's yelling at you the whole time. My dad's never talked about UAVs in my entire life.

Jake: Spy plane standing by.

O'Shea: My dad's first line in Black Ops is, "Carlos."

Jake: You're Bowman, right?

O'Shea: That was it. I was like, "Oh, shit, that's Dad." 'Cause I didn't know what scene he was gonna appear in, and his character don't look like him. It was just like a, "All right." I've always known my dad was different, but he'll remind you every now and then.

Jake: Did you ever see a foreseeable future? You never know, man, right? You wanna be involved in the gaming scene too. Would you ever also wanna be voicing over in a Call of Duty?

O'Shea: Whatever anyone needs. I be looking at the actress Debra Wilson. She's in everything, and I'm just like, "What do I have to do? Who do I have to talk to?" I literally went to USC to write scripts for video games because of Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

Jake: Oh, I didn't know that.

O'Shea: Bro, the whole reason why I even realized that I like telling stories and writing scripts and all of that was because of Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts changed my life. And then once I got to college, everybody's talking about movies and TV, and I'm like, "Call of Duty just made a billion dollars in a weekend."

In my mind, I wanted to create a game, 'cause I could make you pay $16 a movie ticket, or you could pay $60 for this game, and now you can spend 100,000.

Jake: Maybe I'm shooting wrong 'cause I'm pretty sure, didn't you wanna be involved in the back end, like the writing and producing then? And then you stumbled across, I could be on screen too?

O'Shea: No, it was really, I was hellbent on being on the other side of the camera because I wanted to keep my privacy. Like my dad, I didn't have a dad that could just take me to the mall. It would be chaos, everything had to be so planned out and drawn out and there was never any spontaneity.

If Dad has to take you, it has to be a whole thing and security and yada. And I didn't want that. I wanted my privacy. But in the middle of my second year of college, downstairs one weekend eating cereal in the kitchen, as one does, my dad was like, "Hey, they're taking this NWA movie serious."

I'm like, "Thanks. Yeah, that's dope. Good shit, Dad." And he's like, "No, in a perfect world, I want you to play me." My dad's never asked me for anything, so I gotta knock it out the park for him. And then now I've just been trying to make the shit work for 11 years.

Jake: That's so crazy, 'cause I've seen many interviews where you tell this story and I'm like, I can't even... We got my regular nerves, right? I can't imagine being like, "Yeah, I do wanna play that." Sure, why not?

O'Shea: And like, I said yes in less than two seconds, but in my mind I was like, "There's three good rap movies. It's probably gonna be some shit." But I was like, "Who's behind it?"

He's like, "Universal Studios." I was like, "Pretty good name to have behind it." And that kinda eased me a little bit, and then Gary Gray, I really felt like it was gonna be a full circle moment. My dad gave Gary Gray his first movie with Friday, and my first film was Straight Outta Compton.

I just thought it was gonna be very kumbaya, and I had to audition for two fucking years. And I was like, "Ugh." I left college in the middle of my second year. Two years of auditioning. I'm watching the homies graduate without me. It was terrifying. But everybody just thinks I just got the shit like out of bed.

Shout out to the boys over at Somerville playing Call of Duty, playing FIFA.

Jake: What would you say is your favorite Call of Duty of all time?

O'Shea: I feel like Modern Warfare II is the cop-out, 'cause everybody loves that one. It's like, "Who's your favorite basketball player?" "Oh, Michael Jordan." Bro, all right.

But shout out to my dad, I gotta go Black Ops, especially because I feel like that was the most locked in with Zombies I'd ever been. By the way, fuck that bear. Fuck the bear from Zombies. O'Shea Jackson Jr.

Jake: And I want people to know how much of a gamer you actually are, and forgive me if I'm wrong here. Pretty sure I've heard you tell a story about one time you had a breakup, kinda semi-recently, and one of the first things you grabbed was your PS4.

O'Shea: Oh my God. Swear, yo, swear to God. Swear to God.

I had made the decision right then and there. Yeah, she's not gonna be able to continue. Thank you for playing. She didn't know it at the time, but in that moment, we had just broke up. In my mind, I'm single immediately, and I was like, all right, so just get through this argument, and we're fucking outta here, dude.

Did the whole, put the acting on, "It's okay, babe. Yeah, it's fine. It's all right. Let's go to sleep, let's sleep it off." Bro, waited for her to go to sleep, I stood up, the only things I took were my laptop, my Attitude Era WWF, 'cause it still has the F on it, Attitude Era World Heavyweight Championship, the Big Eagle, and my PS4.

'Cause in my mind, these are the three things that are irreplaceable. I'm not about to put these hours back in, so no, you can't touch my PlayStation. By the way, her name's Lucille. That's the name of my PlayStation.

Jake: Not the girl then?

O'Shea: That was BB King's guitar, bro. It was like, shout out to Lucille, I'll be home shortly, and my wrestling title, and my computer.

Everything else, clothes, and chains and shit, I can rebuy that. I have no connection like those three things, bro. Don't touch a man's game. That shit, when they be on YouTube, and the girls be like deleting 2K, you bitches deserve a small place in hell.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.