50 Cent and Jake Gyllenhaal grace the cover of the August 2015 issue of VIBE digital magazine. The actors star in the forthcoming movie Southpaw.
50 Cent says that Eminem, who was supposed to play Gyllenhaal’s role and now serves as executive producer of the soundtrack, expressed his approval of the film.
“He was like, ‘Yo, Jake looks fuckin’ crazy in that movie,'” 50 says. “‘I’m glad it worked out the right way. It went the right way.’ When you’re around something, you’re reading it and you’re comfortable with the material. And then you actually see it on the screen and you go, ‘Damn. Look at this.’”
Gyllenhaal says that 50’s performance as his character’s manager reminded him of boxing promoter Don King, who worked with Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
“I was training at Church Street gym downtown and [director] Antoine [Fuqua] had 50 come and just talk,” he says. “We met up and the second we met, I literally got out of the ring. I was done with training, we met in the back room and he just started talking to me like he was my manager. From that moment, I was like, ‘He’s amazing.’”
“I’ve had these communications with professional fighters,” says 50 Cent, a friend of Floyd Mayweather’s and former head of SMS Promotions, “so it was easy for me to get into that little pocket.”
