The first time O’Shea Jackson Jr. played Donnie Wilson, he was the unassuming driver for a seemingly impossible bank heist in 2018’s “Den of Thieves.”
Seven years later, Jackson returns as Donnie in “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” this time front and center with box office star Gerard Butler.
“It was the feeling of being able to go back to a character and kind of revisit an old friend of yours,” Jackson told NBC News. “In the first one, Donnie is so under the radar. He’s so, just, out of the way, you don’t really want to pay too much attention to him. In this one, people know what to expect from Donnie, so there’s no more hiding, and you have to bring his personality and his attitude, mindset, to the forefront. That’s exciting to do.”
Produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, “Den of Thieves 2” is the follow-up to the first film, in which a group of thieves pulls off a heist of the heavily surveilled L.A. Federal Reserve, thwarting hard-nosed cop Big Nick, played by Butler. Jackson’s Donnie, the heist’s driver, emerged as the hero who escaped to London. And he’s still the hero — or more accurately the antihero — in the sequel.
Keeping his talents in Europe, Donnie from L.A. has transformed himself into Jean-Jacques, a mysterious diamond dealer with African roots. Beset by the personal woes of divorce and an empty bank account, Big Nick has tracked Donnie down not to bring him to justice, but to join his next big-stakes heist. That includes a meticulously planned and ambitious hit on the ultrasecure World Diamond Center.
The movie opened last week and topped the box office over the weekend, outearning “Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and “Nosferatu.”
For most of the sequel, Jackson speaks with an accent. “It was a challenge,” he admitted. “It was the first time in my career I did anything in a different language. But I had a good time. I knew I had the right people behind me.”
As in any high-octane heist movie, he said, the inevitable stunts were a challenge. In one moment, he and Butler were climbing up and down an elevator shaft in heavy neoprene suits. In another, the two were thrown into the ocean.
“I’m a regular dude,” Jackson said. “Me and Gerard did not like that day. It was kind of like, ‘We’re really going to do this.’ And we got in the boat, and it was like, ‘Man, we’re really far from shore.’”
But, he added, “you got to pay the cost to be the boss. And I didn’t do movies to do the stuff I do every day.”
Paying the cost has also meant making his own way in the entertainment industry apart from his iconic father, rapper, producer and actor Ice Cube. Jackson said it was difficult at first.
“Obviously, you want to make a name for yourself, and it’s hard to do when you’re a junior, you look like him, and the first thing you do is play him in a movie,” he said, referring to the 2015 biopic “Straight Outta Compton” about his father’s fabled group N.W.A, which helped springboard him to stardom.
“In the beginning, there’s always talks of stepping out of a shadow, and I had to really learn early, and that really takes a lot of inner conversations to realize that there is no shadow,” he said. “That is something that people from the outside looking in tell you.”
“What you are doing is building on your family’s name, and there’s a sense of pride that you have to have with doing that,” added Jackson, whose subsequent credits include “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Just Mercy,” the “Star Wars” miniseries “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and “Cocaine Bear,” among others.
“My goal,” he said, “is to take our family name to new heights in film.”
