Jamie Foxx Wouldn't Do Day Shift Without Dave Franco
In the Netflix film "Day Shift," Jamie Foxx plays Bud, a pool cleaner by day, vampire hunter by night, selling fangs at a pawn shop to make extra cash. As it turns out though, fangs aren't worth very much. This prompts Bud to rejoin the vampire hunters union, overseen by a cowardly supervisor named Seth, played by Dave Franco.
Franco, of course, is known for his comedy work in films going all the way back to "Superbad," which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. He's acted in comedies from "21 Jump Street," to "Fright Night," to the heartwarming zombie comedy "Warm Bodies." He even appeared in the ninth season of the TV comedy "Scrubs." Director J.J. Perry — making his feature film directorial debut — had full confidence in the pairing of Franco and Foxx, as Franco mentioned in an interview he did with Collider. Perry told him, "I want to lean on you guys for the comedy. I want you to do your thing."
For Foxx though, it wasn't just about a good fit with his co-star. He was actually unwilling to do the film without Franco, as he said in the same interview.
'I'm a comic snob'
Foxx told the outlet:
"I knew I had the right guy to do it because I literally told JJ, 'I don't want to do the movie unless Dave Franco's in the movie. I've been tracking this dude for years, man.'"
That's pretty major praise, coming from an Academy Award-winning actor who has mastered both comedy and drama. He continued:
"I tell people all time, 'I'm a comic snob. I'm the comic elite.' People may make me laugh, but I want to know how he was making me laugh because he was doing it in such a clever way."
"Day Shift" is a fairly broad comedy that opens with the destruction of a vampire grandma with a shotgun, and has a main character who pawns fangs to pay for his daughter's braces. When you're dealing with a premise like that, it has to be grounded in believable characters. What they're doing with their lives may be unbelievable, but the characters themselves have to be people you could pass in the grocery store.
Franco has that grounded feel in his comedy work. Even in the trailer, when he's defending the final film in the "Twilight" saga, you believe that he actually liked it (even if you cannot for the life of you understand why). You have to be especially clever to keep a character who pees himself after a fight, almost barfs in his hands, and fights vamps with a neck brace grounded in reality.
You can see for yourself if Foxx's faith in Franco's comedy stylings is justified right now, because "Day Shift" is currently streaming on Netflix.