Jamie Foxx defended Quentin Tarantino at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday after the director’s participation in an anti-police rally in New York last week led police associations nationwide to call for a total boycott of Tarantino’s work.
Foxx presented the evening’s Ensemble Award to the cast of the Hateful Eight, Tarantino’s upcoming Western film, and offered his own personal note to the embattled director.
“Keep telling the truth, keep speaking the truth and don’t worry about none of the haters,” Foxx said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Foxx previously worked with Tarantino on the director’s 2012 film Django Unchained.
The backlash against Tarantino began after the director marched in an anti-police rally in New York last month and made incendiary comments about police officers.
“When I see murders, I do not stand by,” Tarantino told the demonstrators. “I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”
The anti-police rally was held just four days after NYPD officer Randolph Holder was shot in the head and killed while pursuing a suspect on foot in East Harlem. Tarantino told the New York Post that the timing of the rally was “unfortunate.”
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — the largest police union in New York City — immediately called for a boycott of Tarantino’s films and was quickly joined by police departments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia.
On Friday, the National Association of Police Organizations, representing 1,000 national police units and associations, joined the growing boycott. The backlash against the Hateful Eight has grown so large that distributor Harvey Weinstein is demanding Tarantino apologize for the remarks and is reportedly weighing conciliatory moves, including holding special screenings of the film for law enforcement officers.
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