'Do the Right Thing,' 25 Years Later; Where are They Now?

Twenty-five years ago, a rising director who was relatively unknown to mainstream America detonated the Hollywood scene with the seminal film about sizzling race relations in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in New York City called Do the Right Thing.
The film was a cultural touchstone and turned Spike Lee and many of its cast members into stars and even superstars.
Spike Lee and celebrity friends such as Wesley Snipes — who turned down a role in Do the Right Thing but later starred in Lee’s Mo Better Blues and most notably Jungle Fever — celebrated the silver anniversary of the film with a block party on the street where the film was made.
Let’s take a look at where the cast and crew of Do the Right Thing are 25 years later.

Spike Lee — He was a 32-year-old fiery and cantankerous Morehouse graduate who pulled triple duty in his movies as the writer, director and star in his films. By the time the film opened in the summer of 1989, Lee was already a well-known commodity among urbanites through his popular black-themed classics She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze. 
Lee also achieved fame inside the industry for creating the classic Michael Jordan-Nike commercials that turned MJ into a global icon.


Ater Do The Right Thing, Lee went on a tear with films Mo Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn and all the way up to his last big film Inside Man. Amazingly, perhaps tragically, white people still don’t understand the climactic scenes in the film.
“White people still ask me why Mookie threw the garbage can through the window,” Lee complained to the Associated Press around the time of Do The Right Thing’s 20th anniversary. “Twenty years later, they still ask me that. In 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why.”

Samuel L. Jackson — He played the radio deejay Dr. Love Joy in Do the Right Thing and was probably the biggest star of any of Lee’s films who went from nowhere to Hollywood superstardom.

Afterwards, Jackson became a mainstream star in another Spike Lee movie, stealing the show from Wesley Snipes in Jungle Fever as a drug addict, which incidentally launched the career of Halle Berry, who played Jackson’s drug-addled girlfriend. He owned the 1990s and eventually his films made more money than any actor in Hollywood history, most famously as Jules in the Academy Award-nominated Pulp Fiction.

Danny Aiello — Most people don’t remember or know that Aiello has played in other iconic movies, including his cameo in The Godfather Part II in 1974. He was the big name that Lee was able to snag among a mostly unknown cast playing pizzeria owner Sal.

A few years later, Aiello also starred in the funny but commercially disastrous Harlem Nights opposite Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Arsenio Hall and Redd Foxx. Now 81, Aiello is still the character actor he came to fame as.

Ruby Dee — She played the hard-edged matriarch of the Brooklyn block, Mother Sister and a frequent critic of The Mayor, played by her real life husband, Ossie Davis.

Dee was a beloved heroine who used her platform as an actress to fight or civil rights alongside her husband. She garnered her only Academy Award playing Denzel Washington’s mother in 2007’s American Gangster. The Cleveland native passed away in June at age 91.

Ossie Davis — Davis was already a screen and civil rights legend by the time Do the Right Thing appeared in theaters. He played a street wino who dispensed, or tried to, advice to the younger generation while drawing the constant ire of his real-life wife, Ruby Dee.

Davis, who died at 87 in 2005, was a actor, director, screenwriter and stage thespian was also the conscious of black America who devoted his life to civil rights and spoke at the funerals for both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s.

Rosie Perez — Perez was a former Soul Train dancer when Lee cast her for her first film role as the sassy, foul-mouthed and disgruntled Puerto Rican girlfriend.

Afterward, Perez sustained a moderate level of fame for a few years, starring opposite Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson in White Men Can’t Jump.

Martin Lawrence — Lawrence was knee-slappingly funny as the wayward adolescent who seemed to always be around trouble.

No one could have forecasted that he would metamorphose into a superstar actor and comedian who would command big ratings through his sitcom, “Martin,” and his blockbuster movie hits such as Big Mammas Hosue, Big Mammas House II as well as the ultra successful Bad Boys and Bad Boys II.


John Tuturro — Playing pizza shop owner Sal’s son, Tuturro was the films lightning rod who delivered some of the films most memorable lines as the racist son. 
Tuturro has accrued widespread respect within the industry, and Lee like him so much that he cast Tuturro in two more films, including Jungle Fever, as the dopey lovestruck shop worker who, this time, fell head-over-heels for an attractive black woman.


Richard Edson — He played racist Pino’s little brother, and son of Sal, who befriended Mookie in Do the Right Thing.

Edson was a character actor who had moderate success in both movies and music. Before Do the Right Thing, he was most famous as playing the wayward parking garage attendant who took a sports car for a joy ride in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. He also had roles in other classics Dirty Dancing and Platoon. He may be most famous to mainstream audiences for his music band Sonic Youth.


Bill Nunn — Nunn came to fame in Do the Right Thing playing the memorable character Radio Raheem who commanded respect. He always carried around the then-popular massive mobile radio that only played Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” His character became the lightning rod of the film’s climatic scene when Raheem was put in a fatal choke hold by the racist NYPD cop, sparking the riot that would destroy Sal’s pizzeria.


Nunn would play in other Spike Lee joints, including making his acting debut in Lees’s School Daze that came out before this film. But the Pittsburgh native’s most famous characters outside of Do the Right Thing was as the stuttering Dudder Man in Mario Van Peebles urban classic New Jack City, as well as the cop who put Whoopi Goldberg in protective custody in the comedy classic Sister Act. 


Public Enemy — This groups brand of rebellious hip hop and scorching political commentary within their songs made them one of the most beloved and respected hip hop groups of all time. Their signature song, “Fight the Power,” was ubiquitous throughout Do the Right Thing, transforming the group from fringe fame into a global hip hop power.

 
 

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