Eminem was actually dissing Anthony Mackie, not his character, during 8 Mile‘s climactic rap battle, according to the actor.
Speaking on The Pivot podcast, Mackie revealed that Em used details about his real life as ammo against him during the iconic scene, much to his surprise.
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“Eminem is such a brilliant dude. We’re on set one day and he’s like, ‘Yo, it doesn’t make sense that we’re beefing.’ I was like, ‘Right!’He says, ‘I need something on you.’ So we talked for like two hours, chilling,” said Mackie, who portrayed Papa Doc in the 2002 movie.
The Captain America star then revealed that the taunts about his character’s privileged background — including attending a private school and coming from a good family — in the film were actually about him.
“The next day we’re shooting the battle scene, and that’s why I’m standing there like, ‘You’re talking about me, you’re not talking about Clarence. That has nothing to do with the character. You’re an asshole, Eminem!’ I’m like, ‘I wanna fight this muthafucka!'” he joked.
Earlier this year, Anthony Mackie told Esquire that he had his own ideas for how the scene should’ve played out.
Remembering a conversation with director Curtis Hanson, Mackie said: “I said, ‘For the final scene, it should be a back and forth.’ He goes, ‘Okay.’ I said, ‘So I should go first, he should go second. Then it’s a tie, then we have to have a battle off, then he goes, [and] then I choke.’”
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While his suggestion was not used, even though his character still choked up in the battle, Mackie recalled filming the classic scene.
“When we’re doing the scene, it was like everybody there was a rapper, so everybody was kind of talking trash ‘cause they knew I wasn’t a rapper. And I was like, ‘Yo, I’m tired of this, man,'” he said.
“I was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to grind my teeth so my face looks intense’ … And then [Eminem] started rapping, and if you look at my face in the scene, I’m like, ‘Damn, this is good.’
“This was nothing about Papa Doc; this was Anthony Mackie had to live with being murdered this awfully forever. So yeah, it was an awful moment in my life.”
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8 Mile was both Eminem and Anthony Mackie’s debut movie roles, and went on to gross almost a quarter of a billion dollars while winning an Oscar for its classic song “Lose Yourself.”
