When Ron Howard starred in his only rap video: “I’m the opposite of a big pimpin’ kind of dude”
A rap video would undoubtedly be somewhere near the top if there were ever a list of places Ron Howard was least likely to be spotted. And yet, the two-time Academy Award-winner has one under his belt, and to make things even more bizarre, it’s technically Barack Obama’s fault.
The unlikely chain of events that saw one of Hollywood’s most wholesome filmmakers look so jarringly out of place alongside the bright lights and thudding beats of a club-set music video does admittedly fit neatly into its status as one of the most unexpected things the former child actor has ever done.
Everyone knows Howard as the cherub-cheeked star of The Andy Griffith Show who embodied the aw-shucks ideals of Happy Days‘ Richie Cunningham before evolving into one of cinema’s safest pairs of hands who knows fine well he doesn’t have a signature style, not that he cares when he’s got a cabinet full of awards and a filmography that’s earned billions at the box office.
Where exactly does a former president fit into the suitably strange tale? At Obama’s inauguration as the leader of the free world, Howard was hanging out in a “tent full of showbiz people and their families.” He was approached by Jamie Foxx, who asked if he’d be interested in heading to Los Angeles to make a guest appearance in the video for ‘Blame It’, the second single from his third album, Intuition.
“I had no idea what in the world it was or what I was doing,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I do not have a secret night-clubbing side. I’m the opposite of a big pimpin’ kind of dude. Probably the last time I was in a club was doing research for Night Shift in 1981. Discos, they were called then.”
Still, he wasn’t the only famous face to pop up. Jake Gyllenhaal and Forest Whitaker were also on hand, while the song itself features T-Pain, and the video was directed by Hype Williams, who’s helmed videos for the likes of Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, The Notorious BIG, Tupac Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and Will Smith, which inevitably made Howard feel like the odd one out.
“When I saw the finished result, I did ask around,” he confessed. “‘Is it OK that I did this?’ I mean, I am one of the whitest men in the world. I like singer-songwriters. But I thought it was funny that I was in it. Jamie sent me a case of champagne, and I asked him if I could now blame everything on the a-a-a-alcohol. I haven’t heard back from him on that.”
Howard has rarely found himself in such unusual company, and it’s fair to say he sticks out like a sore thumb when a cavalcade of sharply-dressed recognisable figures begin to emerge from a Rolls-Royce looking like they’re ready for a heavy night at the club, only for his pasty, balding, ginger, and hilariously solemn face to join them. It’s weirdly funny, and it’s safe to say he’s never done anything like it before or since.
