On Sunday, June 30th, Spike Lee hosted the 30th anniversary of his Academy Awards nominated film, Do the Right Thing on the actual block that it was shot (a street now named Do the Right Thing Way). One of his special guests was actor and musician, Omari Hardwick.
After shouting out his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha (yelling out to a guy named KP and saying “1-9” and getting the proper response “0-6”), Hardwick said that 30 years ago there was a movie that changed the culture and made him believe that he could actually be an actor. That movie was Do the Right Thing.
He continued to talk about how after that movies were not culturally responsive to the Black and Brown communities, But Spike made sure that we were seen on camera in respectable ways.
Hardwick says, “Spike made sure that we looked beautiful in anything that we did.”
He continued, “And then one day that same man that created Do the Right Thing 30 years ago, he became my first boss. Most of y’all don’t know it, but he gave my first job in Sucker Free City in 2003. Spike Lee was Omari Hardwick’s first boss.”
Spike is not from Brooklyn! Omari Hardwick let the hat out the bag!
Posted by Nicole Yvonne Duncan-Smith on Monday, July 1, 2019
He went on to talk about being from Georgia, and then dropped a firebomb that blew everyone with the blood of Brooklyn pumping through their veins. He said that Spike Lee, despite pumping his Brooklyn flag in the air like no other, he was actually from Atlanta… well sorta.
The Power star revealed that Spike Lee was born in Atlanta, not anywhere near Kings County. Spike tried to stop him for telling the crowd that bit of news… But Hardwick dropped it like it was as hot as the 90 degree weather (it was hot out there). Hardwick (also an ATLien) acknowledgement that why he was born there he became a man in Brooklyn.
Spike was born in Atlanta, GA on March 20, 1957. His real name is Shelton Jackson Lee, moved up north as a toddler. He later returned to Atlanta, to attend Morehouse College. It was at Morehouse that he met actor, Samuel L. Jackson.
