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J.K. Simmons Thought Damien Chazelle Was a Black Man After Reading ‘Whiplash’ Script. Then They Met: ‘Who’s This Curly-Haired Kid From New Jersey?’
J.K. Simmons read the script for "Whiplash" and assumed Damien Chazelle was a Black man.
Chazelle admitted to Vanity Fair that he also had an assumption about Simmons that didn’t pan out to be true, explaining: “When we first started doing ‘Whiplash,’ I mainly thought of [J.K.] as the dad in ‘Juno.’ He had this wholesome, decent, all-American vibe to him in a lovably, gruff, comic way. “I’d written it thinking about a variety of people, but the jazz orchestra conductor that I played under was very different physically, temperamentally, from J.K. Simmons,” the director explained. In addition to the Oscar, Simmons won best supporting actor prizes from the Golden Globes and BAFTA Film Awards.
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