‘Straight Outta Compton’ Star Jason Mitchell on How He Landed Eazy-E Role: ‘I Brought the Rain’

Jason Mitchell had a feeling Straight Outta Compton would be special. But he never imagined the biopic about the rise and fall of gangsta rap group N.W.A would shatter box office records and become a mega-success.

“I think it really snowballed into something incredible,” Mitchell told TheWrap. “Straight Outta Compton is not a story we didn’t know about or anything like that, but it’s just something that resonated really well… It had no choice but to explode.”

Mitchell plays Eazy-E, one of N.W.A’s founding members. The actor said he saw the film six or seven times before it hit theaters on Aug. 14, but he didn’t expect it to be a critical darling or become a contender in the awards race. The Universal release currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 88 percent and has received several awards nominations, including a Screen Actor’s Guild nod for Best Ensemble.

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“I never, ever thought that we would be nominated for awards and all this stuff would happen,” he said. “I knew that we had done our best after we finished it, so I can’t completely be like, ‘I’m super surprised,’ but I am, I’m completely surprised because I felt like we did our best but I didn’t know the world would love it.”

Eazy-E, who was born Eric Wright in Compton, California, dealt drugs and used his earnings to fund N.W.A’s first album. He eventually had a falling out with the group, went on to perform solo, and died of AIDS in 1995. It was a taxing role that required a wide range of emotions.

New Orleans native Mitchell said his journey toward landing the part was his “best casting audition ever.”

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“I brought the rain , I cried, I did all kinds of stuff,” Mitchell said. Because he couldn’t fly out to do a call-back audition, he had his second audition on Skype — and booked the part right there.