The casting for Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated next feature film, Django Unchained, continues. Just last week, we got the ridiculously brilliant news that none other than Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks to join the film, as long as he can fit it into his already busy schedule.
Word now comes via Deadline that Tarantino has found his female lead in Kerry Washington. Washington has been rumoured to be involved with the project for some time now, and Tarantino had had his eye on her from the beginning. He then flirted with the possibility of instead opening the role up to a talented newcomer, but it seems now that he has gone back to his initial gut feelings, with Washington currently in negotiations.
The film’s cast currently also includes Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Don Johnson, and I’m very much hoping we can officially add Joseph Gordon-Levitt to that list soon too. Washington will be playing the role of Broomhilda, the wife of Foxx’s titular Django. Foxx’s Django will be at the centre of the film,
“a slave who’s liberated by a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter and taught the tricks of the trade by his mentor. Django’s major goal in life is to recover his wife, and to do it he needs to get past the villainous ranch owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), who runs Candyland, a despicable club and plantation in Mississippi where female slaves are exploited as sex objects and males are pitted against each other in “mandingo”-style death matches. Candie is a slave’s worst nightmare, and that is where Django’s wife Broomhilda is an abused slave.”
I must admit, I’m not especially familiar with Washington’s work to date, even though it includes some very high-profile films like The Last King of Scotland and Ray; it just so happens that I’m yet to see them. But if Tarantino likes her – and has liked her right from the start – then you know that she’s got to be right for the role. Django Unchained will be hitting cinemas on Christmas Day next year, which is going to pretty much make it the best Christmas ever. Thank you in advance, Mr. Claus.
