Gary Anthony Williams made audiences laugh and cry for nearly a decade as Uncle Ruckus on The Boondocks and now he takes his talents to another cultural phenomenon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, which releases to theaters nationwide today (June 3).
Both series have garnered huge fan bases through a balance of comedy and ability to relate to everyday life. For Williams, he connects the creative freedom from The Boondocks to his role as Bebop.
“There is something which is just that freedom to perform,” he says. “The guy who created The Boondocks, Aaron McGruder, he loved to just let you go. He’d write really great words for you and then if you had something that you thought might be more fun and you just wanted to try, he would really just allow you to do that. And the [TMNT] director David Green and the producer Andrew Form they were all about that. They were like, ‘Let’s shoot the way it’s written.’ Then after that, ‘Why don’t you guys just kinda have fun with this and see what happens?’ Sometimes they would start with the just have fun with that. So just that knowledge of the person steering the ship is gonna let you kinda be free and try some stuff that normally you wouldn’t get to do and alot of that shows up in the film.”
The Boondocks has established itself as a staple in urban culture. Williams points out the 2006 episode “Return of the King” where Martin Luther King, Jr. comes out of a coma as one especially poignant moment for the series and says overall that the program did its job of offering social commentary well.
“Those cultural messages mixed with humor in The Boondocks is really what made it really work,” he says. “You could say some real truthful stuff, some real bitter medicine and coat it on the outside with comedy and I think The Boondocks is terrific at doing that.”
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Just as he plays the antagonist in The Boondocks that allows the harsh truth to shine, Bebop and his partner in crime Rocksteady aid the supervillain Shredder in giving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the opportunity to become everyone’s favorite heroes. Both Bebop and Rocksteady made their first appearance in the 90s Saturday morning animated series adaptation of the Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s comic.
“As rude as it could be at times, especially my character, he’s just a horrible guy,” Williams says of Uncle Ruckus, “but he was there to point out that other side and give those heroes, Huey and Riley, something to really bounce off of, which is very similar in this. Turtles aren’t gonna be heroes unless you can have some really good villains for them to fight against.”
The Ninja Turtles relate to the streets as well, not only because they live in sewers, but because they each have their own definitive character. Michelangelo, who goes simply as Mikey through most of the movie, wears a gold chain and at one point in the film, makes a comment about his Hip Hop collection.
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“I think the cool thing is they really try to get those different personalities of the turtles,” Williams says. He credits the actors for the turtles, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek and Alan Ritchson, for giving life to the amphibians.
“All those facial movements, those body movements, the emotion, everything is from those actors and they then translate over to the computer,” he says. “But with that Hip Hop and each of those kind of throwaway things it just gives you a little bit more about each one of their personalities, and I think that’s a cool texture to add other than them just being these turtles. You know one strong, one smart, one is this, one is that it really gives you a little bit more into the identity of who they really are when they’re just hanging around and not out protecting the city.”
Vanilla Ice performed at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows premiere last month, which reminded today’s audiences of the 1990s glory when he first introduced “Ninja Rap” with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret Of The Ooze. Besides the performance, the latest installment pays tribute to this legacy.
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“I’m telling fans there’s a little bit of throwback for some Vanilla Ice situation in there,” Williams says. “So just keep an ear out you’re going to hear a little audio joke in the movie somewhere. That’s an easter egg I’m hiding for everyone right now.”
As a fan of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, Williams says it was an honor to play Bebop and be a part of the family atmosphere. He says what he first connected with about the turtles and still clings to today is their story of brotherhood. The comedian promises audiences that they will enjoy the movie and if they don’t go support, there might be dire consequences.
“All y’all Hip Hop heads man, I’m one of you, I get you,” he says. “Seriously, I think this movie is so fun on so many levels on the comedy side, on the action side and definitely, anybody who was a fan of the comic book or the cartoon, you are definitely going to enjoy this because it really does take it back to where it was. And also, look, I’m gonna tell you right flat out, if you don’t go see this movie, you’re racist. You don’t wanna be that. You don’t wanna be that. That’s the bottom line.”
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