Hulu/Craig Blankenhorn(NEW YORK) — Shameik Moore plays a young Raekwon in the new Hulu series Wu-Tang: An America Saga. The 24-year old actor, singer and rapper tells ABC Radio that the Wu-Tang Clan series shows the authentic side of the group that its members never revealed in the past.
“When cameras came, it felt like the FBI to these guys. So there wasn’t really showing or saying certain things to the camera,” he says. “[We] wasn’t gonna find out what made Method Man tick, what made Raekwon tick, what made RZA tick.”
“On this show, you get more,” Moore continues. “You get what makes them tick. The stuff that they would never just show you, you know, in a documentary or just being themselves.”
Moore worked with RZA previously when the Wu-Tang leader directed his upcoming film Cut Throat City, which also stars Wesley Snipes, Terrence Howard and T.I The Get Down star says it was on the set of that movie that RZA decided he should play Raekwon.
“He told me that he saw moments in that film, small moments, where I got upset or I got more serious and he was like, ‘I feel like you can play Raekwon based off of that.’”
Ironically, Moore says as a child, he wasn’t allowed to listen to hip-hop. However, he became a fan through watching the 2004 film You Got Served, starring Marques Houston and B2K.
“I was in military school and Christian schools, like real strict environments growing up,” he recalls. “Then I got into hip-hop after I saw You Got Served. That was a totally different generation of hip- hop at that point.”
Wu-Tang: American Saga, also starring Erika Alexander from Living Single, premiered September 4 on Hulu.
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