Of all the celebrity cameos you might expect to pop up in “Jackpot!”, Machine Gun Kelly probably wouldn’t have been one of them. He becomes a key piece of the movie though and, according to director Paul Feig and movie stars John Cena and Awkwafina, the rapper was “so game” for it.
The new film, now streaming on Prime Video, centers on Katie Kim (Awkwafina), an aspiring actress who just moved to LA. During an audition, she literally wins the lottery but doesn’t know that, in this LA — the movie takes place in a not-so-distant future — the lottery is a lot more violent.
That’s because, here, those without a winning ticket are legally allowed to murder the winner and take over their payout, so long as the murder happens before sundown, and isn’t completed using a gun. Enter Noel (Cena), an independent bodyguard who’s willing to protect Katie for a piece of her winnings.
She agrees, and together the duo goes on the run, hoping to make it to sundown. At one point, Katie determines it’d be easier to wait things out in a sealed panic room. She also just so happens to know that MGK has one.
And when they arrive at his house, yes, it’s really MGK — though as an actor, he uses his legal name of Colson Baker — that’s living there.
“We were just trying to figure out who we were going to put in this cameo. There was one cameo that was originally written in, which I just felt like we’d seen a bunch of times,” Paul Feig explained to TheWrap. “Like, I want to surprise everybody when you see a movie, you know?”
Feig was tight-lipped on who that original cameo was written for, but added that, when the rapper’s name entered the mix, he was immediately who they wanted.
“We just kind of heard from his managers that he was looking to do something kind of, you know, to make fun of himself,” Feig said. “And I was just like, that would be awesome, because he’s completely unexpected. I never expected MGK would be in this movie.”
He continued, “And then he showed up, and he was so game for anything. You saw what we put him through! We literally do everything to the guy in it. And he was in, he was just, no complaints. Just the best.”
John Cena readily agreed, echoing just how willing Baker was to make himself the butt of the jokes.
“He could have easily tried to steer, creatively, a narrative that made him look not as much of ‘the joke’s on you.’ He was all for it,” Cena told TheWrap. “‘How do we make this funnier? How do we make this better? What would happen if it did this? What would happen if you do that?’ He was fantastic.”
Both Feig and Awkwafina added that the rapper was very up for improvising with the duo, something Awkwafina credits the director for.
“I think it’s the environment that Paul creates. It’s comedy heaven, I think, for an actor. Because you have three layers, right?” she explained. “Like, you do the script to take, you have complete liberty to free swim. Paul will never cut you off, he wants you to do that.”
“But then he’ll come in with like, these alt lines that you’re not expecting. He’ll either whisper in your ear, like give it to you, and then when you say it, they’re like, those were the ones that broke me the most,” she continued. “And you realize that, you know, it does justice to the writers that are on set. It does justice to like, you know, the actors that are improv-ing. And it’s a very active and present way of directing, which I really, I really love.”
You can watch TheWrap’s conversation with Feig, Cena and Awkwafina in the video above.
“Jackpot!” is now streaming on Prime Video.
