Freddie Gibbs Stars in New Movie ‘Down With the King’

After his album Alfredo was nominated for a GRAMMY award, Freddie Gibbs moves in a different direction. He is taking his talents to the big screen starring in a new movie Down With The King. The movie directed by Diego Ongaro debuted at Cannes film festival and is Gibbs first movie role.

Freddie Gibbs plays the character of Mercury Maxwell, a rapper who’s lost his taste for the game leaving New York for The Berkshires. While Mercury considers quitting music to become a farmer, despite his despairing manager (David Krumholtz), he connects with a local woman, Michaele (Jamie Neumann). Ongaro explains his inspiration for the film came from reading an interview about a young French rapper.

 “He was very successful, and there was a lot of expectation on his second album… he was genuinely talking about his feelings in the interview, which is something that’s pretty rare in the rap game… there was something really interesting to me which stayed in my head.”

 “I started thinking about a rapper who’s later in his career, that’s just having a crisis that’s just really tired of the game… and then joining together these two worlds that don’t belong together, the rap world and the farm world.”

Freddie Gibbs talked about his process filming a movie for the first time:

“Being in the rap game and having that experience that can definitely be tiring. I can’t say I was in the same mental space as Mercury was in the movie, but I had to get there to play the role. That’s all a tribute to Diego, he really babied me, you know. This is my first thing, so he taught me how to crawl, then walk. He made it easy for me.”

Take a look and watch him talk more about the movie courtesy of Deadline below.