Inspired by true events, Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga offers a unique look at the story of an ambitious young group of musicians out of New York City in the early ’90s, who struggle to leave their lives of crime behind in order to pursue a more legitimate means of making money. Wu-Tang icon The RZA, who has gone on to work with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) and Ridley Scott (American Gangster), is serving as both an executive producer and writer for this eight-part limited series.We spoke to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse star Shameik Moore about his upcoming role in the project as Corey Woods, aka Raekwon. “I’m not from New York, so I had to tap into how [Raekwon] speaks,” Moore told IGN. “So if he’s busy or something, I’ll just send a video or send a voice message of me practicing lines and hearing how I sound, so he could give me feedback. But if he is able to speak on the phone, I’ll call him and I’m like, ‘Yo, so loop de loop’ and then he’d say, ‘Nah, you got to do it like this.'”
In the first episode, titled “Can It All Be So Simple,” RZA (portrayed by Ashton Sanders) begins to play one of his signature beats, while Raekwon freestyles over it, as you can see in IGN’s exclusive clip above. Moore is also a musician, so he told IGN that the rapping came naturally: “I have a heavy reggae influence as well, because my family’s Jamaican. So when it comes to rapping, it’s just switching up intent. I can use my voice however, you know?”
Moore calls his portrayal of Raekwon the most “character-driven” role he’s ever done, due to the fact that the legendary Wu-Tang member is “an actual person” who he was able to meet and spend time with.
Moore also compared his performance as Raekwon with his role as Shaolin “Shao” Fantastic, a fictional rapper from Netflix’s The Get Down: “So while it is me [on screen], it has to be [Raekwon] versus playing someone like Shaolin Fantastic. There was no Shaolin, you know? I had my own idea about what that was and created that with Baz Luhrmann and everybody that was involved.”
Back in 2015, before his breakout role as Miles Morales in Into the Spider-Verse, Moore starred in a critically-acclaimed coming-of-age movie Dope, which told the story of a group of high school outcasts growing up in South Central LA. Moore credits that role with opening the door for his subsequent success, after Into the Spider-Verse co-writer and executive producer Phil Lord saw the film.
“I feel like if I didn’t do my job in Dope, nothing else would’ve followed,” Moore explained. “But I did my job with Dope, and Phil happened to be in the theater when we premiered it at Sundance. They saw it. They were there and had me in mind for Morales and it ended up being that way.”
Wu-Tang: An American Sage premieres on Hulu on Wednesday, September 4, 2019.
David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.
