Escalante Lundy Describes Experience as Madingo Fighter in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained

New Orleans, LA, January 06, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Escalante Lundy’s major motion picture debut comes by way of Hollywood’s most prolific Director Quentin Tarantino, in the box office sensation Django Unchained. “My answer…if I felt comfortable, I shouldn’t be doing this movie. Because if I felt comfortable doing this movie, what could I bring to it,” says Lundy when asked about playing Mandingo fighter, Big Fred, in Tarantino’s 2012 spaghetti western. “It’s not a movie that should make you feel comfortable.”

Django Unchained, stars Academy Award Winners Jamie Foxx and Christophe Waltz, alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo Di Caprio and Kerry Washington. However, as with everything Tarantino, Lundy’s fight scene has come under extraordinary scrutiny. “You know, Fred is not a killer by nature,” Lundy says. “He’s forced to fight. He’s put in a position where he’s forced to bring up some primitive base emotions that everybody has and he’s forced to use these emotions for survival. Big Fred uses his stature to last longer and to live longer. That’s why you see this person in the film. This man is dead or he’s about to die if he does not win. Why is this necessary? I realized, for Fred, this isn’t a survival match: this is a death match. It was kill or be killed.”

On meeting and working with Quentin Tarantino, Lundy is very descriptive, “When I met him, he said he was considering me for Big Fred. Then he sat me down and explained to me who Big Fred is. He said Big Fred, is what he would call a reluctant warrior, someone who is chosen to fight only because of his size. But he’s not a person, instinctually, that wants to fight. He just happens to have this size.” Lundy also adds, “Big Fred is basically that gentle giant. He’s put in a situation where if he doesn’t survive he will die. So it’s life or death. There’s no point system you fight until the death. The fight goes until one man can’t fight anymore, and you see what happens to the other guy when he couldn’t fight anymore.”

Lundy’s role as a Mandingo fighter reflects the contrast of the powerlessness of slavery against the super human strength it took to survive such atrocities. “Developing the character was a six month process for me. I had to come up with something that would encapsulate what it felt like to be a slave.”

Lundy says he put himself in the mindset of being a person with no hope to improve their situation, under any circumstance. “What was even worse is that as a man, if you had a wife and children, you couldn’t do anything to better their situation.” He continues, “You and your family could be treated any kind of way and your hands were tied. There was no way I could understand how to be a slave, but I came up with something that finally worked for me. The word I used was despair. Despair is the one word I could use to get an idea of how it felt to be a slave.” Additionally, the grueling fight scenes Lundy appears in are riveting. Although filming the scenes was long and arduous, the efforts paid off. Tarantino directs Lundy in some of the most memorable aspects of the film. Django Unchained opened Christmas day 2012 and has grossed more than $60 million dollars. Finally on working with Quentin Tarantino, Lundy says simply, “He’s one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.”

Escalante Lundy is an Actor and New Orleans Native. His role as “Big Fred” in Director Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, marks his motion picture debut. For interviews please contact Buckhead Public Relations, 770.695.5078 or pr@buckheadpr.com.