Known for drawing performances that allow his actors to take their craft to a new level, Mann wanted to fill the roles of the Miami-Dade police, feds and their quarry with men and women who were as dedicated to understanding the back stories of their characters as they were to performing on screen. He knew that to realize these cops or criminals would require rigorous training and strict discipline on the part of his cast.
Also crucial to Mann was designing a production that had a multicultural look and feel…mirroring the players in his intersection of the third world and global conglomerates. Discussing his leads, Foxx, Farrell and Li, Mann shares, “Working with actors like Jamie, Colin and Gong…the level of aggressive ambition in how far we can take it is what makes the experience of directing exciting and adventurous.”
Mann’s choice of Jamie Foxx to portray Ricardo Tubbs taps into a relationship that goes back several years between the actor and filmmaker. Miami Vice is the third collaboration between the two, following 2001’s Ali and 2004’s Collateral, for which Foxx was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor. In that same year, Foxx was nominated for and won the Best Actor Oscar® for his work in Ray.
Mann relates, “Jamie is a genius at using mimicry as a means to get to an immediate, spontaneous, truthful place with moment and character. He knows the demeanor that Tubbs should have, and he goes all the way with it.”
In developing the urbane and dead-smart Tubbs, Foxx describes his method as “working with the characteristics of a person. I have to see someone and watch them, because I already know what I want to do with the character.”
Training with the actual undercover cops he met to prepare for his role, Foxx spoke openly with the officers about the trappings of the occupation. “You’re tempted to do this and you’re tempted to do that,” he discovered—asking of them, “Do you taste the other side?”
According to the actor, straddling the line between the job and what the underworld exposes you to is “like being married, and you’re having an affair. You are married, but you are dating the wild side over here.”
Bringing life to the charismatic and flirtatious Sonny Crockett, a role he—like millions of other fans—originally knew from the ’80s television series, would be Colin Farrell. The Irish native, fresh from starring in two epics, Oliver Stone’s Alexander and Terrence Malick’s The New World, would settle easily into the role of Southern-bred Crockett. Farrell succinctly notes, “Crockett is a good guy; he is as solid as a rock.”
The actor would come to share his director’s passion for research and preparation. Of finding his character, Farrell says, “The amount of information that Michael had to offer all of us was amazing. We went everywhere to find Crockett…Atlanta, Memphis and parts of Texas. We studied who his father was, that his mother died pretty young. I reviewed reels of information on the clothing of the time Sonny was born—what the number one shows, movies and music were. It permeates through you and affects your choices.”
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