The mysterious secret society founded by Wesley Snipes: “A global community of multi-talented hyphenates”
Anyone who’s made it in Hollywood has their own particular relationship to fame and notoriety. Some love being in the limelight and stay in it for a long time, while others achieve stardom and then quickly dip away from the spotlight, sometimes by choice and sometimes through scandal. Wesley Snipes is both, having become no stranger to the highs and lows of celebrity.
Quickly making inroads in the film industry, Snipes was discovered by an agent and cast in Michael Ritchie’s Wildcat alongside Goldie Hawn, later going on to work with Martin Scorsese in the music video for Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’, which caught the attention of future long-time collaborator, Spike Lee.
Snipes soon skyrocketed to fame for his work in films like cult favourite sports comedy Major League, Abel Ferrara’s crime thriller King of New York, Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Jungle Fever, and White Men Can’t Jump, before evolving into an action star through Passenger 57, Demolition Man, and the Blade trilogy.
It seemed as if Snipes was at the top of the world and happy to stay there until he was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, spending 28 months behind bars before being released. Since then, he’s developed a rather interesting outlook on life, which even extended into the creation of his own secret society.
Taken from the nickname of his vampire-slaying comic book character, Snipes described the ‘Daywalker Klique’ to The Guardian as “a global community of multi-talented hyphenates, skill masters, adept at doing more than one thing extremely well on a mission to bring light to the world of darkness.”
It’s a rather cryptic description, but when asked to expand on this, Snipes mysteriously hinted that the reach of the ‘Daywalker Klique’ extends everywhere from the highest rungs of the scientific ladder to the corridors of governmental power. “For instance, you might have someone who by day is a senator and by night is a rock ’n’ roll guitar player,” he suggested. “And you might have somebody who by day is a nuclear physicist and by night is a professional karaoke artist.”
Interestingly enough, it’s not entirely dissimilar to the public perception of Snipes. In many ways, his own identity is wrapped in many contradictory personas; he is seen as the king of the action movie, a martial artist and superhero, but also viewed by some as an ex-con and a star no longer held in high regard within Hollywood.
However, the ‘Daywalker Klique’ does at least offer a new approach to rebranding and expanding the limitations of how he – or its members – could be perceived. As controversial as Snipes’ career has been, he recently reclaimed his iconic role of Blade for the first time in 20 years when he guest-starred in Deadpool & Wolverine, and who’s to say his secret society didn’t pull some strings to make it happen?
