Wesley Snipes denies Patton Oswalt's claims of odd, violent behavior on Blade: Trinity set

It’s been a while since Patton Oswalt has spoken of his time on the 2004 sequel Blade: Trinity—like, a really long while. In fact, we wouldn’t blame you if you forgot about the time in 2012 when the comedian spoke to The A.V. Club about it during an installment of Random Roles, where he detailed an outrageous account of Wesley Snipes’ alleged behavior on set. During what he described as a “troubled production,” Oswalt claims that Snipes refused to leave his trailer, smoked weed a majority of the day, would only answer to the name Blade, and would only communicate with director David Goyer, who he also attempted to strangle, via Post-It notes. He later reiterated portions of the story (not the choking bit, but the weed and Post-Its madness) for fellow comedian Pete Holmes on his talk show two years later. It was a story that Oswalt largely laughed off as an amusing anecdote, but one person is definitely not entertained by it: Wesley Snipes.

In a recent, rare interview with The Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, Snipes responded to the story for the first time, denying any attempts at violence towards Goyer. “Let me tell you one thing. If I had tried to strangle David Goyer, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me now,” Snipes told The Guardian. “A black guy with muscles strangling the director of a movie is going to jail, I guarantee you… Did I go to jail for strangling him? Never happened.” When asked about the on-set Post-It notes communique, Snipes offered a blanket denial of Oswalt’s story after questioning why “people believe this guy’s version of this story”:

“This is part of the challenges that we as African Americans face here in America – these microaggressions. The presumption that one white guy can make a statement and that statement stands as true! Why would people believe his version is true? Because they are predisposed to believing the black guy is always the problem. And all it takes is one person, Mr Oswalt, who I really don’t know. I can barely remember him on the set, but it’s fascinating that his statement alone was enough to make people go: ‘Yeah, you know Snipes has got a problem… I remind you that I was one of the executive producers of the project. I had contractual director approval. I was not just the actor for hire. I had au-thor-i-ty to say, to dictate, to decide. This was a hard concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”

Snipes’ last major film role was in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, where he played D’Urville. He’ll be reuniting with Eddie Murphy in Coming 2 America, which is currently slated to drop on Amazon Prime December 18.