It is 8am and Vivica A Fox, the star of two Independence Day films, two seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, both parts of Kill Bill and, latterly, two Sharknado movies, has been awake for hours. She sprang out of bed at 4am, pottered around and “did a little social media post” about her podcast, Hustling with Vivica A Fox. It’s a spin-off from Every Day I’m Hustling, her memoir-cum-self-help manual which contains health tips (“Hydrate, girl!”), social media advice (“Use hashtags to join big conversations”) and underwear secrets (“I’m a G-string type of gal”). Once the podcast was online this morning, she explains, “I said to myself: ‘Let’s get some coffee on. It’s showtime!’”
First on the agenda is the droll new thriller Arkansas, in which she plays the mysterious “Her”, who works as go-between in a drugs ring and is first seen in curlers, toe separators and a jazzy kaftan; Liam Hemsworth, Vince Vaughn and John Malkovich struggle in vain not to be outshone. Down the line from her villa in the San Fernando Valley, where she has a spectacular living room view of the Santa Susana mountains, Fox talks through the various traits of Her: the character’s serenity (“That came from my mother, who’s religious”); her cool control (“I brought in a presidential thing there”); her no-nonsense efficiency (“A lil’ bit of my gangsta style”). But we are done with Arkansas in under five minutes, which is roughly the combined length of her scenes in the film.
Besides, there is so much more to discuss. Fox is 55 and has played an influential part in shaping on-screen images of African American life. By the time she was seen in 1996 in Independence Day as Will Smith’s girlfriend, a pole-dancer with (you’ll never guess) a heart of gold, she had already put in a decade’s hard graft on soap operas and sitcoms. Worried that people would be flummoxed by her unusual first name, she sometimes introduced herself back then by her middle name, Angie. That was until a female casting director pointed out that her full name would double also as a factual statement: “Vivica’s a fox.”
Independence Day gave her a movie career but it was the heist thriller Set It Off a few months later that demonstrated her range and vitality. The film remains special to her; she tells me there is a framed poster of it in the room she’s calling from. “Set It Off got me my street cred,” she says. “I was the good-looking kid on the block at the time. Then everyone saw that and said: ‘Oh, she hood.’”
One fleeting moment in that movie demonstrates her knack for identifying small but revealing details in any scene. Her character Frankie has just been interrogated aggressively by white detectives who wrongly suspect her of colluding in a violent bank robbery. Getting up to leave, she pauses in front of the only black female officer in the room, who has been quietly sipping water, and says: “You didn’t even bother to ask me if I was thirsty, sister.”
There was no scripted interaction between the women: Fox improvised that line, which addresses racial and gender solidarity more adroitly than some of the film’s bombastic monologues. “That small bit of humanity was important,” she says. She is proud now that several of her early pictures made what she calls “culturally driven statements”. Set It Off “was about how we get screwed over in life, especially women”. Soul Food “showed the African American family expressing fellowship through food”. The romantic comedy Two Can Play That Game demonstrated “black love, how we love each other” and featured African American characters whose wealth was unconnected to drugs or crime. “I fought very hard for those images. I got on everybody’s damn nerves but it was worth it,” she says.
Opposition came in many forms. “We were told people didn’t want to see our stories: ‘You be the sidekick’. We were told African American women can’t lead films. Or that the only stories we could tell were in the past,” says Fox. There is still work to be done. “I’d love to see more docuseries showing that the contribution of African Americans doesn’t always have to be through entertainment. We need to educate children so they don’t think they have to grow up and be athletes or rappers. They can be lawyers and scientists, too.”
Fox’s own career has scarcely been inhibited by external expectations. “Versatility equals longevity,” as she says. When she noticed in the late 2000s that she was losing parts because she was “too good-looking for older roles but too old to play the It girl,” she diversified: she got some theatre work under her belt and launched her lucrative hair collection. One of her brightest spots came when she was cast in Curb Your Enthusiasm as Loretta Black, who is taken in by Larry David along with her family after being left homeless by a hurricane.
The show is not scripted and she found the improvisations taxing, though perhaps not as tough as being banned from having her hair down or wearing makeup. “Larry was a stickler. I’d put on lipgloss and he’d say: ‘Are you wearing makeup?’ I was, like: ‘Dude. Really?’” But there was a point to it all. “He wanted Loretta to evolve so that when she’s finally all dressed up, you’ve seen her grow.” In the final episode of that season, she and David dance together at a bat mitzvah and their romance (cruelly snuffed out in the next season, but never mind) starts to blossom. “Larry was so nervous before that scene. He was walking around dabbing peppermint on his tongue. He said: ‘I’ve gotta make sure my breath is fresh for you.’ Aww!”
It is Kill Bill, though, that she singles out as her proudest achievement. Why that film? “Woooh, chile! That was six months of sacrifice. I went from a size 10 to a two. Tarantino turned us all into assassins.” At one point during the months of arduous martial arts training, she upbraided the director in front of the rest of the cast after he had accused them of not giving their all. It was Uma Thurman who took her aside later and advised her to “learn how to manipulate the situation to get what you want”. It chimed for her with a phrase her father always used: attack intelligently.
“I have to remember that because I can be a little spitfire. I’ve calmed down with experience,” she says. What is most likely to make her lose her cool these days? “Disrespect. You come at me crazy, it’s gonna be on like popcorn.” She assures me she doesn’t like feuds and drama: “I’m not a hater, I’m a congratulator.” After years of turbulence, relations are even tranquil now between Fox and her most notorious ex, the rapper 50 Cent. “We’ve moved on to a peaceful chapter, thank you God!” she says. “I like happiness. I’m attracted to peace. That’s why I’m up here in my mountains.”
At least she can watch Kill Bill and see that all the physical suffering was worth it. “Quentin told me: ‘You’ll appreciate it later.’ And then I saw how great my butt looked. I even had a booty light! When Uma and I are standing in front of the window and the school bus pulls up, there it was. My booty light. Go back and look!” I promise her I will. After all, I know how much that booty means to her from her recent retweet of a fan who remarked “Vivica’s ass in the 90s was the perfect combination of both fit and fat.”
Her memories of Kill Bill acquired a bittersweet tinge when Thurman revealed in 2018 that she was attacked by Harvey Weinstein prior to making the film (during his downfall, Thurman wrote on Instagram: “I’m glad it’s going slowly – you don’t deserve a bullet”) and that Tarantino endangered her life on set by forcing her to drive a stunt car which then crashed. “I had no idea at the time,” Fox says. “That woman is graceful. Uma I consider a quiet storm. I didn’t know she crashed the car. I was, like: ‘Oh my God!’ She never told any of us.” Nor did Fox encounter the predatory side of Weinstein, with whom she went on to make the fairytale comedy Ella Enchanted. “He was nice. Matter of fact, he made my part bigger. It was disappointing to find out later that he abused his power. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
More recently, she has been nose-to-nose with another modern American bogeyman: Donald Trump, who presided over the 2015 series of Celebrity Apprentice on which Fox was a contestant. She has called it “the most racially charged set I’d ever been on”. How did that tension manifest itself? “You could see the manipulation. They’d pit Brandi [Glanville, star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills] against Kenya [Moore, from The Real Housewives of Atlanta] and I really felt there was a black v white thing going on.” She laughs when I remind her that she admitted feeling like “the help”. “That was because of the Trump children,” she says. “That’s the way they were raised. One time, Ivanka said to me and the other black women there: ‘You speak very well.’ We were like: ‘What?’ I don’t believe she meant it to be insulting. Bless her heart. But looking back, especially in the climate we’re in now, you’d be like: ‘C’mon girl. We went to school, too.’”
The high opinion she had of Trump at the start of making Celebrity Apprentice quickly plummeted. “He was obsessed with becoming president and I believe it was because a black man had done it. And Obama had done it so well that, throughout his presidency, Trump was always on him. To this day, he can’t keep his name off his tongue. It’s an awful obsession. I love the way Obama handles it, such grace under fire.”
Fox has watched the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests over the death of George Floyd with boundless admiration, and believes it spells the end for Trump. “It’s gonna be his demise,” she says. “That and the way he’s handled this pandemic. He had no business getting into politics. It was just a notch on his belt. He didn’t know what it meant to hold that position. So I’ve been out there supporting Joe Biden and I will continue to campaign for him. We need some leadership back in the White House because right now there is so much division.” The publicist interrupts the call to inform us that our time is up. “Ooh, that went fast!” Fox gasps. We say our goodbyes and I leave her to enjoy that view from the living room window. There are mountains to admire, as well as a fair few to climb.
• Arkansas is streaming from 13 July and on DVD from 20 July
