Jamie Foxx says a rape scene written for Django Unchained was cut before it was filmed, after he pushed Quentin Tarantino to protect Kerry Washington. Foxx said the change was made while the movie was still in production, before the actors ever reached the set for the scene.
The reason he gave was simple: movies last. On the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast, Foxx said he wanted to make sure they protected Kerry Washington, who played Broomhilda in Django Unchained, because the film would outlive the moment. He said the script included a scene in which Broomhilda and Django get raped, and that he told Tarantino the project needed to think about what would remain on screen for years to come. Foxx said Tarantino was with the idea and that the director even added more of Broomhilda into the film after the discussion.
Foxx also said the timing mattered. He said Scandal was due to premiere soon after Django wrapped shooting, which made Washington’s visibility especially important. In his telling, the scene was not just removed for the sake of the movie’s tone. It was removed because Washington was about to step into a new level of attention, and the people around her wanted to be careful with how she was introduced to a wider audience.
Washington later gave her own account in her 2023 memoir, Thinker Than Water. She wrote that Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino stood in the corner before Tarantino announced that they were all going home, and that the scene would be cut from the script. She said the decision felt like the answer to prayers she had been whispering on her knees. Her version matches Foxx’s on the main point: the scene never made it in front of the cameras.
The detail that makes the story linger is the one that does not fully line up with the tidy version of how Hollywood decisions are supposed to work. Foxx described Tarantino as being the one who agreed to protect Washington, even though Tarantino is usually the one with the last word on his films. Foxx said he had to be vocal and not be afraid, which leaves the real turning point inside that private conversation unnamed: what exactly he said was enough to get a script change that altered the film before a single frame of the scene was shot.
What is clear is that the cut changed both the movie and the way Washington entered the next phase of her career. In Django Unchained, Foxx played Django and Washington played Broomhilda, but the version audiences saw never included the rape scene Foxx described. Washington has since linked Foxx’s support to the example he set, writing that his generosity had no limit and that years later, on the set of Scandal, she still credited him for showing her how to lead.
