Joey Badass revealed he had to go to therapy after starring in the Oscar-winning short film Two Distant Strangers.
“I’m not gon’ lie, I had to do therapy after I shot Two Distant Strangers because it was a lot of internalization,” the rapper told XXL recently. “I remember the first scene in the movie, when I’m coming out of the girl’s apartment and police see me and they slam me on the floor. I remember shooting that in real time and it was people driving by, they would stop, and they would roll down their window and they’d be like, ‘Yo, is this real? Or is this for a movie? What’s going on? You good?’ It’s traumatic for these innocent bystanders as well.”
Badass also talked about not getting paid for his work in the film, which he said was originally conceived as a feature.
“To tell the truth, I didn’t even get paid for that,” he said. “It was a short film. It was a project. An experiment. We did the short film because originally, we were supposed to do a full-length feature film, a full movie. But once I got involved, it activated a lot of people. Once they saw my execution, everybody wanted to be a part of the production team now and that obviously helped it get pushed up in the Recording Academy and we won the Oscar.”
As he gets set to embark on his new musical era, the 1999 rapper also said that he plans on using his real name, Jo-Vaughn Scott, when it’s appropriate.
“That’s actually my intention moving forward,” he explained. “I definitely wanna use my real name when it comes to film more because I just want to make the clear distinction. Joey Bada$$ is not an actor, he’s a rapper. I don’t know if I’ll do the Jo-Vaughn ‘Joey Bada$$’ Virginie Scott thing. I’ll probably just use my name and it’s like if you know, you know, type of thing.”
Joey released his last album, All-Amerikkkan Badass, in 2017, and while he dropped some EPs and singles in the interim, fans have been anxiously awaiting the Brooklyn rapper's proper return to the game.
