Jason Mitchell on Avoiding Typecasting: “I need to show everybody that I’m a 17-layer cake”

“Every person I play, I try to make them from a different world and have them be somebody different.” – Jason Mitchell

Actor Jason Mitchell was virtually unknown before impressing audiences portraying N.W.A. rapper Eazy-E in Straight Outta Compton, and he has since appeared in a variety of successful films, like Keanu, Mudbound, Kong: Skull Island, and The Disaster Artist and Showtime’s The Chi.

Mitchell spoke to Collider to promote his film The Mustang and reflected on his image and career, particularly how he has worked to avoid typecasting:

“I definitely feel like I have a lot more to show, but I definitely feel like I’m on the right track, too. I have 67 tattoos and I didn’t start acting ‘til I was 23 years old, so a part of me feels like I’m gonna get pigeonholed and typecast, and they’re always gonna keep me in that box because this is how I look, this is where I come from, and this is how I talk. So, after I did Compton, I was like, ‘You know what? I need to show everybody that I’m a 17-layer cake. I got faces on faces on faces, that you have not seen of me.’ And I feel like every role that I picked had to be different because I just knew, after I played Eazy-E, that they would call me for all the gangster roles. They called me to be Eazy-E, in every other movie. I was like, ‘Oh, man, I gotta make sure I don’t get crushed like this.’ Every person I play, I try to make them from a different world and have them be somebody different.”